New Music’s Soprano Voice : Lucy Shelton doesn’t have anything against opera; it’s just that there are so many opportunities to sing Schoenberg and Messiaen--solo.

When Lucy Shelton launches into Peter Maxwell Davies’ “Revelation and Fall” with the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group Monday night at the Japan America Theatre, this is (in translation) what she will sing: “I sat in silence in the deserted tavern beneath smoke-corroded beams, alone with my glass of wine; a radiant corpse, head bowed over a pool of darkness, and a dead lamb lay at my feet.”

“The opening is just amazing,” says the soprano, a noted specialist in the music of our century. “I love that first lyrical line; it starts on a low F-sharp and goes up to a high E-flat and then comes back down to the low F again, all in the first minute or two of the piece, and it’s all pianissimo.”

Then there’s the manic business. She is to scream some of the German lyrics into a megaphone, the composer asking for an effect not unlike the sound of a demented Nazi on nitrous oxide. And she also must negotiate virtuosic melismatic passages that, were they to be mapped out on graph paper, would look like a seismograph of the Really Big One. Shelton does not intend, however, to wear the red nun’s habit that the composer chose for the soprano in his own early performances of the 1966 piece. (That costume symbolized and sensationalized the blood-red specter of the text, a 1914 poem by George Trakl; a drop of the ghost’s blood falls glistening in the lonely glass of wine, tasting “more bitter than opium.”) That is not quite Shelton’s style.

Indeed, the whole bravura nature of “Revelation and Fall” is not quite Shelton’s style. This will be her first performance of it, and her “first Max piece.” She calls it the wildest music she has ever sung.

Shelton is usually thought of as a collected, consummate concert artist, not a brazen one, even when she sings such theatrical music as Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire,” a work with which she has long been associated.

When she began being noticed in the early ‘80s in New York, she often said in interviews that she wasn’t drawn to opera, that the song and concert music were more suited to her temperament. And she proved that she didn’t really need the theater. Her strong and pure soprano, her excellent vocal technique, her exceptional musicianship, her devotion to the score as the composer wrote it and her sense of adventure made her a favorite of modernist composers and of critics. She became just about everybody’s first choice for Schoenberg or Messiaen.

Not surprisingly, Shelton also became something of a fixture in New York new music life. Throughout the ‘80s, she could regularly be found in all the smaller concert halls performing with new music groups; but, America being America, she was less often called by the major orchestras, which don’t perform much modernist new music for soprano. She also became, perhaps, a little taken for granted. Then Europe discovered her.

Now based outside of London, in the village of Snape, where she shares a cottage with Oliver Knussen, the British composer and conductor who heads the Aldeburgh Festival there and who will lead Monday’s Green Umbrella Series here, she regularly performs with major orchestras and conductors. She is a favorite of Pierre Boulez, whose “Le Visage Nuptial” she has sung with him around the world, including last season with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She performs with Simon Rattle and, of course, with Knussen, whose three-minute “Trumpets,” for soprano and three clarinets (another setting of Trakl texts), will be included on Monday’s program.

Speaking on the phone from Snape, the soprano, who was born and grew up in Claremont, Calif., confirmed that Europe continues to be a much more receptive place for performing newer works, even those by Americans. “I really didn’t start working in Europe until maybe five years ago,” she said, “so I tend now to have much more work here than in the States, though I was just realizing that this will be my third trip to the States already since January.

“In Europe, conductors much more readily program modern music, and audiences are much more accepting. In the States, even conductors who favor adventurous music have to be cautious and tend to go with the more acceptable pieces, while people don’t think about that over here so much. They’re just interested in doing the new things. A program that’s all contemporary isn’t unusual. There are many more groups here that are more facile with new music.”

As an example, Shelton mentions Amsterdam, where she recently sang Schoenberg’s monodrama “Erwartung,” with the Residentie Orchestra under Knussen. “Everybody who comes to Holland for one of the things that we’re involved in can’t believe the audience response and the quality of the performances and just the whole spirit about it. It’s very alive. Not that everybody loves everything. But it’s something that people want to hear, and the music is discussed everywhere.”

“Erwartung” again brings up the issue of opera. While Shelton prides herself on having built a career exactly the way she wanted to, without having to appear in opera, she has not entirely shied away from it. She appeared in 1989 on a televised production of Tippett’s “The Midsummer Marriage.” And the “Erwartung” experience got her thinking about it once more.

Her concert performances of Schoenberg’s work were part of an elaborate preparation process for the orchestra to learn the music for a fully staged “Erwartung” at the Netherlands Opera, which Knussen led this spring. Shelton says that she couldn’t at first imagine how the soprano who would sing the role on stage could ever memorize the work, do the stage business, watch the conductor and give a good musical and theatrical performance all at the same time.

But then it occurred to her that she has to perform a constantly changing array of difficult works with only two, maybe three rehearsals. “My life is such that I prepare by myself and then have a few rehearsals and then perform.

“But the whole opera scene operates on a totally different schedule. Singers are there for a month before the performances. In fact, it seems like I would probably go crazy having only that to think about. And there’s so much help around. I’m not used to having that help, and I might not like all of it. But certainly the time devoted to it is a luxury.”

And she says that, sure, were the right operatic project to come along she would be interested, “if I have the time.”

That, though, is a serious qualification. Shelton now finds herself constantly in demand. When reached on the phone, she said this was the first time she had been home in three months. And now that Europe knows her, the demands are only likely to increase. This summer, for instance, she sings a major work by Luigi Nono for soprano and orchestra at Salzburg. And she will no doubt become better known as Knussen’s career keeps expanding; he has just signed a major exclusive contract with the prestigious record label Deutsche Grammophon. Shelton will be featured on one of the initial releases in the music of David Del Tredici.

And the composers keep coming. Her just-released recording of a new work, “The Bells,” by Danish composer Poul Ruders, is only one example of the spectacular vocal writing, with its almost extravagant high tessitura, that she inspires. And Shelton is particularly excited that Elliott Carter has just completed a song cycle for her, his first work for voice and piano since the ‘40s, which she will premiere this summer in Aldeburgh.

“There’s plenty of new music to keep me busy, plus I still love singing Messiaen, and I’m still learning many of the classic 20th-Century scores I hadn’t sung before. Plus, composers come up to me all the time and say that they like what I do, so would I look at their songs. I have a stack of scores and tapes that I haven’t had a chance to listen to. But I never say forget it. I’m too happy doing what I’m doing.”*

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Vital Stats

Lucy Shelton sings works by Peter Maxwell Davies and Oliver Knussen. Address Japan America Theatre, 244 S. San Pedro St. Price $10-$13. Date Monday, 8 p.m. Phone (213) 365-3500