Benita Valente Searches for Place in Operatic Sun : Music: The poetic soprano, hailed as the consummate professional, still hungers to sing opera’s plum roles. She opens Wednesday night in a title role in ‘Orfeo ed Euridice.’

Mystifying. That’s what observers on the scene call her career.

“And I agree with them,” says Benita Valente, the sedately beauteous soprano who opens Wednesday night in the Music Center Opera production of “Orfeo ed Euridice.”

All her adult life she’s been a connoisseur’s singer--known for her impeccable musicianship, poetic sensibility and ravishing silvery-toned voice--a no-nonsense professional and a trouper.

But for most of her career, spanning 30 years, Valente has yearned to sing opera, lots of it--not spotty amounts, and certainly not just lieder recitals and solos with orchestras.

“The steady (opera) invitations just never came in,” she says at lunch, picking out vegetables from the fettucine. Her hazel eyes, wide and almond-shaped, look down at the plate, but there’s no trace of bitterness.

True, Valente is here now for “Orfeo” and she’s had a share of operatic triumphs in such antique repertory as Handel, and the Gluck at hand, and Mozart. She even sang Nannetta at the Pavilion 23 years ago--the touring Sarah Caldwell production of Verdi’s “Falstaff.”

“But where are the ‘Bohemes’ and ‘Manons’?” she asks. “For some reason, company directors do not see me as an operatic animal. I’m not it.”

Indeed, Valente manifests none of a diva’s flamboyance or gregariousness or egocentrism or hysteria--traits that seem to be necessary, to some degree, for portraying those ultimately vulnerable heroines who tear at an audience’s emotions. And while she has the physical attributes of a femme fatale, that element of passion and to-the-brink daring does not come across onstage.

Nor does she seem pushy offstage.

“Maybe some singers do better public relations. I just leave it to my management (Columbia Artists Management Inc.) and they typically report that the company liked me very much, even thought I was terrific, but hired someone else for the next production.”

A native Californian from the San Joaquin Valley, Valente is making her debut with the Music Center Opera. Like Marilyn Horne, in the other title role, she left the West Coast for a beckoning music world and made a major reputation.

But the daughter of Italian-Swiss immigrants, the shy little girl from a “cotton and cows” farm near Delano, always retained a core of reserve.

“At a very young age I discovered that my voice had an effect on everybody,” she says, smiling. “Singing was the magic thing I could do--it cut through the shyness and discomfort I felt around people.”

Her Italian-born father played Caruso records and Valente says that by the time she won an audition to study at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia (after crucial training in Santa Barbara with Lotte Lehmann, then Martial Singher) she knew “the whole tenor repertoire, courtesy of Caruso!”

She plunged deep into the elitist circles of music, capturing the heart of Rudolf Serkin, who made her soprano-in-residence at Vermont’s prestigious Marlboro Festival. And even though the tall, graceful brunette won the 1960 Metropolitan Opera Auditions, that company did not engage her until 13 years later.

At 55, the soprano who ventures into diverse literature--from baroque oratorios to German lieder to Verdi to difficult contemporary music--has still not satisfied her longing for a real foothold in opera:

“Even during what my husband (Anthony Checchia, co-administrator at Marlboro) and I call ‘the sacrificial years’--when he had to attend to his business in Philadelphia and I took our young son with me to Germany--establishing myself was difficult.

“I took off for 12 months and when I returned hardly anyone remembered me. Staying on the scene seems to be required.”

Meanwhile the profile of this seemingly stoic but ever-sensitive singer is still incomplete. “Boheme” could be just around the bend.

“After all,” says Valente, “I didn’t give my first Carnegie Hall recital ‘til 1987.” Characteristically, she omits mentioning that it was sold out months in advance.