MUSIC : Upshaw Enjoys the Challenge of Her Varied Career : Soprano likes opera, recitals, chamber music and recordings. She says she’d get bored with just one thing.

Despite her status as a rising international star, soprano Dawn Upshaw hasn’t lost touch with her Midwest roots.

“I like to sing in English. I like to sing American, “ Upshaw, 30, said in a recent phone interview from London, where she was recording Charpentier’s “Te Deum” and “Magnificat” with Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields for EMI.

She will have a chance to sing in both languages, plus German and French, in a recital sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society on Thursday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. Accompanied by pianist Margo Garrett, Upshaw will sing works by Purcell, Poulenc, Wolf, Rachmaninoff and Barber.

“I really like starting the program with Purcell and ending it with Barber,” she said. “I don’t know if a listener will appreciate it in the same way as I do. But I see a kind of drama and development between the two composers. . . . They are both quite dramatic and just evoke a strong religious theme, which ties the beginning and the end of the recital.”

For all that, she did not describe herself as a “directly religious” person. “I think spiritual is a better word,” she said. “Yes, I think of my voice as a gift.”

Upshaw grew up in Park Forest, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, but although she had been singing all her life (mainly folk songs and in a church choir), she did not consider a professional career in music until after she received a graduate degree from the Manhattan School of Music.

Things moved fast once she did. In 1984, she won the Young Concerts Artists International Auditions and secured a place in the Metropolitan Opera’s Young Artist Development program. That led to her first major role at the Met, in February, 1988, as Adina in Donizetti’s “L’elisir d’amore” under the baton of James Levine.

Levine has served as a mentor, casting her not only at the Met but also at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago and in concert in Berlin. Other luminaries she has worked with include Seiji Ozawa at Tanglewood, Mass., Zubin Mehta in Los Angeles and Nikolaus Harnoncourt in Vienna.

Among other honors, Upshaw has also won a Grammy Award for her 1989 recording of songs by Harbison, Barber, Menotti and Stravinsky.

How has all this attention affected her?

“I don’t get nervous in the same way,” she said. “I get more excited than nervous. Certainly, there are times I get a stomachache and am worried in the sense of wanting to do so well, wanting everything to go perfectly. But that doesn’t happen as often as it used to, probably because I’ve gathered more courage and confidence about who I am as an artist and what’s important to me.

“I feel I know my strengths and weaknesses. I can live with them, and as long as the public is interested in hearing me sing and can live with my weaknesses, I’ll continue.”

She doesn’t pause long at listing what she considers as her “weakness.”

“I think that my voice is limited in a way because it’s a smaller type of voice, but not real small,” she said. “It certainly is no more than a lyric soprano.”

Unlike some artists who switch from one teacher to another, Upshaw has stuck with the same one “for about eight years.”

“I always find it difficult to go around from teacher to teacher,” she said. “That can play havoc with your voice unless you have confidence to pick and save from what to use.”

She credits that training with giving her the flexibility to pursue opera and recital work.

“I definitely feel I have quite a varied career, a varied spectrum,” she said. “I enjoy it all. I enjoy the opera, the recitals, chamber music every year and now recordings. It’s all challenging and interesting. If I stuck with any one thing, I think I’d get kind of bored.”

Upshaw enjoys sharing her voice in speech as well as in song.

“I often say a little something, not very much at concerts,” she said. “There’s a huge difference in the way that an audience listens once I’ve opened my mouth to speak rather than just to sing.

“Sometimes, if they’re not expecting you to speak, you suddenly seem more human when you do speak to them, and I think they listen a little more differently once you’ve done that. It just opens the door for a closer kind of bond between the performer and the audience.”

At this point in her career, Upshaw doesn’t worry too much about her vocal apparatus.

“I think if I thought about it too much, I’d become perhaps a little obsessive and paranoid,” she said. “I hardly think at all about my throat. In terms of taking care of myself, if I eat well and sleep well--primarily if I get enough sleep--I’ll stay healthy. Beyond that, I really don’t worry about it or even think about it.”

What does she see as the next step in her career?

“I don’t really know,” she said. “I guess I would like to slow down a little bit. We’d like to have another child.” (Upshaw is married to musicologist Michael Nott, son of her former voice teacher, David Nott, at Illinois Wesleyan University. They have a daughter, Sarah, who is almost a year old.)

“I’d probably want to settle down a little more,” she added. “I certainly don’t have an international career that a lot of other singers do. What little work I’ve done internationally, that might lessen a bit each year. I think I’ll always want to come to Europe and do some concerts and some opera roles each year. But coming over and staying and staying for a long time is not something that appeals to me.”