A Convert to Opera : Music: Soprano Cheryl Parrish was headed for a career in gospel singing when a love for the classical got in the way.

If soprano Cheryl Parrish had followed her parents’ wishes, she would be singing gospel music instead of Susanna in San Diego Opera’s “Le Nozze di Figaro.” Growing up in a Tyler, Tex., parsonage, Cheryl was taught that vocal gifts were used to praise the Lord, not Puccini or Mozart.

“I don’t think my parents ever actually said to me, ‘We think opera is the devil’s lot,’ but it was very obvious that if I followed in sacred music, it would have made my parents swing on a star. So I started as a gospel singer--we had a group for a long time in high school--and I actually wrote a lot of Christian pop songs.”

But Parrish, now in her early 30s, was slowly and inexorably lured away from sacred music. While studying voice at Baylor University, a Baptist-run institution in Waco, Tex., she turned to classical art songs, and when the local Rotary Club gave her a

scholarship to study lieder and oratorio in Vienna, opera won her soul.

“There was just something about the songs of Schubert and Faure that called my name,” she said. “Then I first saw opera while studying in Vienna. I would go to the Staatsoper for 90 cents and stand up in the parterre. When I saw ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ for the first time, I went, ‘Oh no, this sort of changes things.’ ”

There’s not a lot of Texas left in Parrish, save the slight drawl in her speech, which thickens in a slow crescendo when she reminisces about her formative years. Extroverted and easygoing, she speaks thoughtfully, without taking herself too seriously.

Parrish has become a favorite with local opera audiences. She sang Adele in last season’s lumbering “Die Fledermaus,” but her radiant Constance in Poulenc’s “Les Dialogues des Carmelites” two years ago marked her as a singer to watch.

Her career has grown steadily since her 1985 debut as Sophie in San Francisco Opera’s “Der Rosenkavalier.” Sophie quickly became her signature role, one she has sung to acclaim in this country and Europe.

Making her debut in San Francisco was appropriate, since she had been training in that company’s Merola apprentice program since 1981. Parrish pegged her first professional opera appearance as Alice Ford in Otto Nicolai’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” a Merola production that included baritone David Malis, who sings opposite her as the Count Almaviva in San Diego’s “Figaro,” opening Saturday at the San Diego Civic Theatre.

“My management may not call ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ my professional debut, but David Malis and I decided we should, since they paid us to do it,” she said.

For Parrish, working with Malis is not the only professional reunion in San Diego’s “Figaro.” The production comes from San Francisco Opera, where Parrish sang Susanna in that company’s 1991 June Mozart Festival. From that festival production to Civic Theatre comes stage director John Copley and mezzo soprano Judith Christin as Marcellina.

Most opera fans regard Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” (“The Marriage of Figaro”) as little more than a genial opera buffa full of glorious music and a lighthearted plot. With that conventional appraisal of the opera, Parrish respectfully demurs.

“In ‘Figaro’ we see the way people respond to other people having power over them. The Count has power to make rules over people’s private lives, and today we’re still talking about government making rules that regulate people’s private lives. In that sense, I find the opera both relevant and thought-provoking.”

Parrish credits French soprano Regine Crespin as a major influence on her opera career.

“When you watch some people sing, they are tense all over. Regine would just come up and lay her hand on you, and you would relax. She gave me an enormous gift--something hard to express--a sense of personal poise, a way of getting in touch with my core that says, ‘Stand here and let it glow.’ She was a big green light for me.”

Her relationship with Crespin had a reciprocal edge.

“She would also show me off to her students at the Paris Conservatoire. ‘You know, they come from America to study with me,’ she told her classes when she brought me in to sing for them.”

Parrish sees American opera audiences growing, especially in the decade she has been observing them from the opera stage.

“I think we have a wider audience now, because little towns have opera companies. Before, it was the big five or big 10 American companies. Now places like Portland, Ore., and Tulsa, Okla.--you know, what we call redneck towns where I come from--they’ve got an opera company. And the people who go, for whatever reasons, get really hooked.”