MUSIC / RICHARD HOUDEK : Soprano Expects to Bond With Juliette

Glamorous, in a nice wholesome way, friendly and enthusiastic, sensible and filled with quick humor, Maureen O’Flynn seems very much like the girl next door.

She was born and reared in Stockbridge, Mass., in the Berkshire mountains--Norman Rockwell country. It is likely that had the celebrated illustrator applied his brush to a young American opera singer, she might have been depicted much like O’Flynn.

She is cast as the girl-across-town when she sings Juliette for the first time in Opera Pacific’s production of Gounod’s “Romeo et Juliette.” She plays the star-cross’d lover for five performances beginning Friday through March 7 in Costa Mesa.

The next year is developing as one of firsts for O’Flynn. She also will make her debuts at two monuments of the opera world: La Scala in Italy and the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in England.

Over the recent holidays, it was back home to the Berkshires to deliver a promised “Cantique de Noel” and “Gesu Bambino” for the annual Stockbridge Christmas pageant. She stayed a few weeks to study for her portrayal of the fated Shakespeare/Gounod heroine.

As usual, she was enjoying the New England winter weather one morning when the temperature hovered around 20 degrees. She had just trudged from her car through more than a foot of snow to reach the Lenox, Mass., inn where she was to be interviewed.

Turning her attention to sunny California, she said it was too soon to offer her impression of Juliette.

“The feeling usually develops for me gradually, during rehearsals, and it usually changes. But so far I love the part; the poetry is Shakespeare’s. I have a feeling,” she said with a smile, “that Juliette’ll be a relative of mine--I’ve wanted to do her for a long time.”

If she and her Romeo, tenor Marcello Giordani, seem to exude a mellow chemistry during performances, it will be no accident.

The New York agent they share has worked out a schedule that keeps them together for several projects. They appeared in Houston’s “Rigoletto” and in an “Eliser d’amore” in Portland. On the boards next year are another “Romeo et Juliette,” a “Lucia di Lammermoor” and a joint recital in Rome.

“He’s wonderful, and he looks great on stage,” she said. “Six feet, two inches. Dark. Sicilian.”

A budding romance, perhaps?

“Oh, my goodness no,” she said, dismissing the idea firmly. “We’re just good friends. He’s married.”

The roles that O’Flynn has sung frequently--Gilda, Micaela, Susanna--tend to stay with her as friends, she explained. She is extremely fond of the first two, both of whom she portrayed with New York City Opera.

She calls Gilda, the tragic heroine of Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” her “bread-and-butter role,” for she also has sung it in Houston, Portland, Ore., and Washington. It is her debut assignment at Covent Garden in March, 1994. “She’s a creature of true goodness, unconditional, young, poignant and generous, not stupid; really a most noble character.”

When asked if she didn’t think that Micaela, in “Carmen,” is rather a ninny, the singer came to the character’s defense.

“Oh, no. Actually I think she’s one of the most misunderstood characters in opera, but sometimes,” she said, “I think Bizet forgot to write music for her.”

O’Flynn portrayed Susanna in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” for City Opera in New York and outdoors during the summer at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. She reprised the role for the company production televised by PBS in 1991.

In fact, she says she has found vocal soul mates in such Mozart heroines as Pamina in “Die Zauberflote” and Constanze in “Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail.”

She describes herself to be a careful--translation: sensible and realistic--singer. “Luckily, everything has fallen into place; the auditions and opportunities have come at the right times.”

And, she said, nobody has attempted to cast her in a role unsuited to her voice.

She did Violetta, in Verdi’s “La Traviata” on a Texas Opera Theatre tour of a few years ago and will sing Nanetta in “Falstaff” this spring in her La Scala debut. “But I know there won’t ever be an Aida in this voice,” she said.

Last year, O’Flynn landed the role of Marguerite in a Belfast production of Gounod’s “Faust.”

“It was my ticket to Ireland, even if it was Northern Ireland, more than I expected in my wildest imagination. It was like I went home.”

She said the families there were very much like her own. “After dinner they sat around and talked, then gathered around the piano to sing, just as we used to do.”

Family is important to O’Flynn, and while she’s in Orange County, she plans to see six first cousins who live in La Habra.

Born Maureen Flynn, she changed her name legally a few years ago, restoring the prefix O’ that an ancestor had dropped. She did it in memory of her father, an Irish tenor who sang professionally and dreamed of a career in opera.

* Opera Pacific will present five performances of Gounod’s “Romeo et Juliette” Friday through March 7 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Show times: 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 25 and 27 and March 5; 2 p.m. March 7. $15 to $75. (714) 979-7000.