MUSIC : Battle Opens Up--but Not Until After Some Cross-Fire : Eventually, the internationally renowned soprano discusses her career, plans and even her hometown. She performs in her only West Coast recital Thursday at the Performing Arts Center.

With fame often comes caution, and Kathleen Battle, the internationally renowned soprano, certainly can live up to her name when it comes time to talk to the press.

For a recent prearranged interview before her recital Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, for instance, the phone rings at the appointed time in her Beverly Hills hotel room without answer.

Another call 10 minutes later and still no answer. A call 20 minutes later and still no answer.

The next afternoon, a soft-spoken Battle calls to explain. “I was expecting a call (at the same time) from my agent in New York to confirm the interview,” she says sweetly.

Oh. One gathers she would have answered the phone had it had been her agent rather than a reporter calling. Well, at last we’re talking, and that’s the important thing. Let’s try to get off on the right foot.

Most people would take being called a stubborn perfectionist--as some critics have described Battle--as a sort of compliment. But she does not.

“I wouldn’t say that is how I would describe myself,” she says. “Let’s go on to the next question.”

Well, how about discussing when we might take some pictures of her, one of the most attractive women in classical music? The request draws a gasp.

She agrees on a time for a photo session the next day, but a few hours later she cancels the appointment, saying simply, “I’ll be out.”

Such are the prerogatives of prima donnahood.

By now, the Battle story is fairly familiar. Born in 1948 into a steel-working family in Portsmouth, Ohio, Battle started singing at an early age. Although she had won several local contests, she had not wowed anyone at the Metropolitan Opera regional auditions enough even to make the finals in New York, so she went on to study music education at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.

But then, while she was teaching music in 1972 to grade-school children in Cincinnati, a friend told her about an audition for Thomas Schippers, then-conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony. Schippers needed a soprano to sing in Brahms’ “Ein Deutsches Requiem” in Spoleto, Italy. Battle won the part and her career took off, especially after Schippers recommended her to James Levine, now artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera.

Levine became her mentor, and Battle went on to sing regularly at the Met and at virtually every important opera house in the world. She also has sung with most major orchestras and their eminent conductors.

With her lyric soprano, she commands a range of roles from Mozart to Strauss, but she avoids the heavyweight repertory of Puccini and Wagner, as well as most recent music.

“I haven’t done contemporary music,” she adds. “Nor do I think I will have a great leaning in that area. However, there is a commission that I’m quite excited about: a song cycle for me by Andre Previn with words by Toni Morrison,” the 1988 Pulitzer Prize-winner in fiction.

“The premiere will be roughly a year from now in Carnegie Hall,” she says. “The collaboration has been quite fascinating and wonderful.”

Battle says that she will be making her Carnegie Hall recital debut later this month with the same program she is singing this week in Costa Mesa.

The recital represents “a very special endeavor on my part,” she says, because it was the same program she recently gave in her hometown as a benefit for a neighborhood youth center that was “very key in my growing up in the city.”

“I wanted to give my hometown my best,” she said, her attitude softening at last. “(The program) also had to relate well to a number of places, including here in Los Angeles and then in Carnegie Hall.

“I’ve sung in recitals and concerts around the world, but this was near and dear to my heart. There are barely 235,000 people (in Portsmouth), and they raised $60,000 for this youth center. I was just amazed to go back and do that benefit. People in my hometown put in a tremendous community effort. It was something not short of amazing.

“It was a tricky program to plan,” she adds. “I could not begin to tell you all the planning. Many hours of thought and planning. That’s the hardest part of giving recitals.”

Battle says her career currently is roughly divided into thirds between recitals, opera and concerts.

“It’s a balance that works very well for me,” she says.

Despite her vast experience, she admits to experiencing “a certain amount of nerves” on the day of a concert. During the day of a performance, she would prefer to rest, but that is often impossible.

“Many times the venues are not available until the day of the concert,” she says. “That makes it tough on the singer.”

When she can rest, she prefers to avoid music. “Many times in my home, I have silence,” she says. “No TV, no record player. I feel that need to read, to sort of cleanse and purify.”

But she does listen critically to recordings of her singing.

“If you’re planning a record, you better listen to yourself,” she says. “If I let you be the first person to listen to me, it will be too late to change anything.”

* Soprano Kathleen Battle will sing works by Handel, Mozart, Liszt and other composers in her only West Coast recital on Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. The program is sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society. Tickets: $12 to $35. Information: (714) 646-6277.