O.C. MUSIC : She’s No Stranger to Opera’s Challenges : Despite the danger, soprano Ai-Lan Zhu studied her craft during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She performs Friday at the Performing Arts Center.

Making a career in opera has always been a risky proposition. But few singers face the real-world risks soprano Ai-Lan Zhu undertook when she began studying opera surreptitiously during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when Western art was rigorously denounced.

“We studied secretly,” said Zhu, who was born in southeastern China in 1956. “I went to the conservatory in Beijing. By chance--also by luck--I got a voice teacher (Jiang Ying) who was trained in West Germany. She started to teach me some Western music.”

That in itself could have been considered a punishable offense during the Cultural Revolution, and it was not uncommon for anyone caught engaging in “degenerate” Western art forms to be sent to work farms, prison or worse fates. Fortunately for Zhu, once the political climate began to thaw in 1976, the two were able to study more openly.

“That led me to my opera career,” she said.

It has been a career that in a short time has taken her from being a finalist in the Opera Company of Philadelphia-Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition in 1985 to Peter Sellars’ controversial South Bronx staging of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” for Pepsico Summerfare in 1989. She also appeared in his hotly debated “Die Zauberflote”, which he set in Los Angeles, for the Glyndebourne Opera in 1990.

Zhu also will alternate as Leila in Bizet’s “Les Pecheurs de Perles” (The Pearl Fishers) for Opera Pacific, opening Friday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

After graduating from the Beijing Conservatory, Zhu and her husband, baritone Chai Lun Wueh, were routed by the government not to the local opera company but to a folk song and dance troupe.

“We tried very hard to move,” she said. “After three years, we moved to the Central Opera Company of Beijing.”

Still, the lure of the repertory drew her inevitably to the West. After a yearlong wait, she was able in 1984 to leave China, where her parents and three sisters still reside.

“I had no problems leaving,” she said. “When I left, (the authorities) said they would hold my job.”

Zhu’s first stop in the United States was Connecticut, where she still lives with her husband.

But things were tough at first.

“When I came here, I didn’t speak a word of English,” Zhu said. “The very beginning was very difficult. . . .

“Being Chinese and singing in America is not that easy,” she added. “I have to work double hard. After rehearsal, others can relax or go shopping. I don’t. I have to stay home and study again. I really have to learn because my English is not very good yet and also for the music education, for the background. We don’t have as much as Americans do.”

Still, nobody ever asked her to relearn how to sing.

“I had a very strong background, and I didn’t have to change anything,” she said. “Of course, you want to improve yourself all the time. But I was lucky enough--I had my Chinese voice teacher. We still keep in touch. Sometimes I call her in China and talk for an hour.”

Sellars was impressed enough to select her for his Zerlina and Pamina in his stagings of the Mozart operas.

“He just picked me up,” Zhu said. “I auditioned once. He liked me. He’s a fun person to work with. He makes you laugh all the time and makes you feel comfortable and relaxed. I did learn a lot from him.”

Still, her modesty led to some staging conflicts with the spiky-haired Los Angeles Festival director, which she still talked about haltingly.

“He asked me to bring Masetto’s hand, to put it on my chest,” she said. “I told Peter, ‘I don’t like that.’ ‘But it looks so beautiful,’ he said. When I saw it on TV, I really didn’t feel comfortable.”

Sellars’ “Magic Flute” upset many at the Glyndebourne festival. “Of course, I remember the boos,” Zhu said. “But it also got good reviews. . . .

“Personally, I like Bizet better,” she added. “I don’t say I only like Bizet. I do like Mozart. But I like to sing other composers of opera because there are a lot of emotions, dramatic things that go on.”

She said that she works on both singing well and trying to become her character.

“Of course, I would try to sing well first, then know myself in the character,” she said. “Then it depends on the director, who is very important.”

To plumb the depths of the character, she puts herself through a rigorous regimen, which includes vocalizing for about 40 minutes daily and doing her own translations to help her understand the text better.

“I do a translation, word by word,” she said. “They have translations already in the scores, but I don’t look at them because they aren’t word by word, just by meaning. I like to know what words mean. Then I make my own sentences.”

Her work mostly has been confined to opera, by choice.

“I haven’t done too much concert work,” she said. “So for right now, I do prefer doing opera. There is a lot going on on stage. It’s more fun.”

After singing in Costa Mesa, she will travel to Ohio to appear in “Pearl Fishers” with Dayton Opera, one of three companies run by Opera Pacific general director David DiChiera. Then she has concerts in Connecticut and Paris before traveling back to Glyndebourne to repeat Sellars’ “Magic Flute” in a new English translation by Alice Goodman, librettist for John Adams’ “Nixon in China.”

“So far I’m happy,” Zhu said. “But sometimes I’m lonely because I like to be social. . . . It’s better to go out to perform.”

She will be singing Leila in “Pearl Fishers” in Costa Mesa for the first time.

“The first time, you don’t really know what you’re doing,” she said. “I don’t really know what is going to happen on stage yet. . . . Only after singing a role many times can you improve it. I’ll try my best, but that’s what I probably need to do to get better.”

* Opera Pacific will present Bizet’s “Le Pecheurs de Perles,” Friday, Feb. 15, through March 3 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Janice Hall and Marcello Giordani will sing Leila and Nadir, respectively, on Friday, Feb. 21 and 23; Ai-Lan Zhu and Jianyi Zhang will take over on March 1 and 3. James Dietsch will sing Zurga at all performances. Staging is by David Gately. Mark Flint will conduct. Tickets: $20 to $70. Information: (714) 556-2787.