MUSIC : A Mezzo on the Fast Track : Italy’s Cecilia Bartoli arrives for her local recital debut, seemingly on the verge of greatness at the age of 25

The giggles are infectious, frequently bubbling up regardless of the topic. Maybe Cecilia Bartoli is just giddy from her fast ride. Barely on the international music scene four years, this 25-year-old coloratura mezzo has seen her career take off at about the speed of the red Alfa Romeo Spider convertible she so loves racing through her native Rome.

The voice itself is smallish and brightly colored, extending from a low G on the bottom to a high C on top. She gives no hint of switching vocal gears as she moves throughout the range. Southland cognoscenti get their first exposure when Bartoli makes her Los Angeles recital debut Wednesday at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena.

Like the great Spanish mezzo of a generation ago, Teresa Berganza, Bartoli seems to have a confident knowledge of what she can or can’t do, or what she should or shouldn’t do.

“I know I will never sing Amneris or Azucena,” she says, referring to the heavy dramatic mezzo roles of Verdi. “My voice has changed since I first started. But who knows where it will go? Perhaps in seven or eight years I might be ready for Bellini’s Romeo or Adalgisa in ‘Norma,’ but not now.”

For the present she is content to limit herself in opera to Rossini and Mozart. “Music for me is much more than just opera,” Bartoli says. “I have much concert music to learn.” In honor of the composer’s bicentennial, her recital here will be a Rossini program, much of it unusual and rarely heard. She has heavy recording commitments also for Baroque music, old Italian songs and more Rossini and Mozart.

The two mentors she credits most for both vocal technique and repertory are her mother, Silvana, and the musicologist Philip Gossett. Her mother has been her only teacher, having been a former opera singer. Gossett suggests music to her that he has found in his research.

Bartoli sang from early childhood, but she was almost lost to the dance world. Growing up in Rome, she studied flamenco. “But I decided there was a limited future for an Italian girl in a Spanish art.”

So the dance world’s loss is the music world’s gain.

Bartoli has just completed concert performances of “Nozze di Figaro” and “Cosi fan Tutte” with the Chicago Symphony, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, and she embarks on a recital tour of Chicago, Boston, New York, San Francisco and Vancouver, Canada, as well as Los Angeles. “Recitals for me are the most difficult. All the responsibility is on your shoulders. You must be in peak form since you are under a microscope,” she says.

Bartoli has important opera debuts coming up with some of the biggest guns on the podium. This spring she will be at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, Italy, for “Cenerentola” under Riccardo Chailly in performances that will be recorded and videotaped. She will participate with Claudio Abbado in a “Nozze” and Riccardo Muti in “Don Giovanni.”

Back in the States, she will finally make her staged operatic debuts in Houston (“Barbiere”) and Dallas (“Cenerentola”) in ‘93, and at the Met as Despina in “Cosi” in ’95.

“I chose Despina rather than Dorabella,” Bartoli says, “because I feel more disposed to the character. It is so important to have the right vocal blend with the Fiordiligi soprano since they often sing in thirds. I was delighted with Lella Cuberli in Chicago, but one isn’t always so fortunate.”

Her compliments to Cuberli also extend to a few other colleagues, but since her operatic experience is so far limited, she hasn’t really known many of them. Bartoli says Leo Nucci and Nicolai Ghiaurov have been particularly kind to her. Asked to name any conductors or singers she hasn’t liked, she giggles once more and replies: “I don’t think I (should) answer that. It might get me in trouble.”

Of those mezzos a generation older than she, Bartoli singles out Berganza (“Those who say we are similar are right”) and Frederica von Stade as those she has admired. She is curiously evasive on the subject of her great countrywoman Giulietta Simionato, perhaps because she not only could do Mozart and Rossini, but also had the vocal heft to take on the dangerous Amneris and Azucena.

Bartoli was very happy that Marilyn Horne came to offer compliments in Bartoli’s Chicago dressing room, since Horne--whose career is now winding down--was the outstanding Rossini mezzo of her time and counted in her repertory heavier Rossini parts that Bartoli hopes one day to do. After a few words the two fell into each other’s arms, and Horne’s near-basso guffaws were soon mixed with Bartoli’s giggles.

One of Bartoli’s attributes that comes across most strongly is patience. The ambition is there certainly, and she could not have reached her level of artistry today were she not a hard worker. But she is not a headstrong or foolish woman--or doesn’t seem to be anyway.

“Certainly there are those parts like Romeo and Adalgisa, even Giovanna Seymour in ‘Anna Bolena’ and Sara in ‘Roberto Devereux,’ that I would like to do,” she says. “It all depends on the voice. It’s changing now, maturing. I think it will get bigger as time goes on and my experience grows. But it won’t kill me if it doesn’t happen.

“I think I have much to offer in my repertory as it is. American audiences I find to be courteous, attentive and knowledgeable. I think I am able to communicate to them. I know I feel them giving something back to me. They are enthusiastic when they like you. I hope it will continue.

“You know what my dream is? Like all mezzos, I want to do Carmen. If that happens, maybe 10 years from now, I’ll be completely fulfilled. If not, I’m still having a wonderful career.”