Soprano Elly Ameling Will ‘Color’ Art Songs in Irvine Recital : Music: Critics praise Ameling for her technique and for her fresh interpretations of a repertory that connoisseurs appreciate.

The art-song singer is a different breed from the opera singer. Whereas the opera singer makes big emotional gestures in order to fill an opera house, the art singer is a miniaturist, alert to nuance, sophistication, understatement, detail.

Among the few true art singers of our time must be counted Dutch soprano Elly Ameling, who will give a recital Sunday at 7 p.m. at South Coast Community Church in Irvine. Critics have heaped praises on Ameling’s warmth and unaffected personality, her splendid technique and her fresh interpretations of a repertory that invariably delights connoisseurs.

“Comparing art song to opera, people think, ‘Ah, but opera is the real singing, and in art song, everything is often soft,’ ” Ameling said in a recent phone interview from Utah the day after her concert there. “That is not at all true. Take any song by Gabriel Faure. Within two bars, you have to go from piano to a double forte. And that is only Faure. . . .

“Art song is sung poetry, and the poetry is the whole reason why the art song was composed in the first place. There is finer detail and more attention to detail and coloring” in singing an art song,” she said. “I think we do more coloring and are quicker within a phrase” than opera singers are.

Ameling thinks that, although “we’ve been told (it) for 100 years,” the size of the audience for song recitals is not diminishing. “Recitals are not at all becoming rarer,” she said. “The only difference is that there are fewer people going to recitals than to opera. Opera is a thing for the big masses. Many people go there. Symphony concerts also attract more people than chamber music concerts. That is the difference, and it has always been like that.”

Sunday, Ameling will sing works by German and French composers, among them Schumann, Schubert, Ravel, Poulenc and Satie.

She picked Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und-leben” because it “is very sincere,” she said. “It’s almost the mirror of the love between Robert Schumann and (his wife) Clara Wieck. It’s almost autobiographical.”

Still, she was not surprised to hear that some audiences find the text--in which a woman expresses total devotion to a man--too self-effacing and old-fashioned for current taste. “That is certainly true. But I am also convinced there are ladies today who do that for their lovers. They might not tell everybody . . . . “

Besides, she countered, the level of the poetry and the music overcomes these objections. “Schumann elevates the poetry to such a high level to express those feelings of warm love that we forget this idea of ‘out of date.’ ”

Nonetheless, to provide some contrast, Ameling will sing Poulenc’s “Fiancailles pour rire,” another “cycle of a woman’s songs but in totally different moods, all rather free-wheeling--although there is some sadness here and there, especially in the second and last songs. It is very touching poetry.

“The whole thing is like most French music--a lighter mood, there is not so much to worry as there is in the German Romantic nature. . . . Where do you find a German Romantic song that is not philosophic and only joyful? There are none.”

Also counterbalancing the heavy philosophy will be songs by Ravel and Satie’s “Ludions”. “This is just nonsense; kind of Dada,” she said.

In addition, Ameling on Monday will conduct a master class at UC Irvine. She gives master classes, she said, if she can fit them into her schedule.

Does she like to teach? “Yes and no.”

“When you give a recital, you sing your songs and give it all out. All your emotions that the music creates, you give right out to the audience. That’s a one-way movement. But when I give a master class, they sing to you and you listen to how they sing, what they do right and what they do wrong. You have to take note of that in your mind. . . . Also, you try to (decide) what the singer can take for criticism, whether you can be forceful or because of the emotional state of the singer, more quiet and friendly. . . .

“There are people you have to be extra careful with because singing lies very near to crying. Both are working from the diaphragm. One is controlled, and that is singing. And the other is uncontrolled, and that is sobbing. So you have to know how the possibilities are.”

She finds that many American vocal students lack a mastery of languages.

“A Dutch singer will usually have much better languages for poetry that has to be sung than an Italian singer, but an Italian has better knowledge and ideas than an American,” she said. “Singers here know very little German for the German lied and little French for the melodie . . . . That’s the first problem that you always encounter in the United States. . . . “When you have to work so much on the language, you have to lose a lot of time before ever coming to the notes.

“You do not have to be absolutely fluent” in the language, she added, “but you do have to have a good knowledge of the structure of the language as well as of the words.”

As for her own performing, she said she is booked through 1992, and she brushed away questions of slowing down. Now 55, she conserves her voice by scheduling recitals several days apart, and avoids giving interviews on the day of a concert. On days when she is to perform, she relaxes, lunches “as late as I can” and takes a nap.

She may do “some vocalizing,” she said. “It depends on how you feel. Just as with your legs; some days you’re stiffer than others. That goes for the voice also.”

But if she does vocalize, she will not sing works on that night’s program in order “to keep them as fresh as possible.”

Not that keeping them fresh is any problem for her. ‘They only get more interesting,” she said of the material. “You find new nuances to bring out--inexhaustibly. That’s really the heart of the matter . . . that keeps a source of joy, however often you have sung them.

“It’s like seeing 100 times the same painting. There is something that is more than the sum of the parts, which is what we call the inspiration of it. You cannot give it a name. But it keeps you interested in it always.”

Soprano Elly Ameling will sing works Sunday at 7 p.m. at South Coast Community Church, 5120 Bonita Canyon Drive, Irvine. Assisting will be pianist Rudolf Jansen. The recital is sponsored by UC Irvine. Tickets: $14. Information: (714) 856-5000.