Fedderly’s Progress : The tenor, a regular at Los Angeles Music Center Opera, will be getting national exposure in PBS’ version of ‘The Rake’s Progress.’

You wouldn’t call it typecasting, but Greg Fedderly is a particularly apt choice to play the role of Tom Rakewell, the country rube hero of Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress.”

Both Fedderly and Rakewell are young, personable lads who hail from small towns, and both have ventured to the Big City, therein to find all manner of new and strange things. But the best reason for Fedderly to portray Rakewell is, of course, his much-praised tenorial timbre.

The opera singer on the international rise stars opposite Barbara Hendricks in the “Great Performances” version of Stravinsky’s opera, adapted by Swedish film director Inger Aby, with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. The program can be seen Jan. 3 on PBS.

To be sure, Fedderly has fared better in Los Angeles than Rakewell does in London, where he falls victim to corruption and, eventually, insanity. In fact, Fedderly, a familiar face at the L.A. Music Center Opera since the late 1980s, appears to be going nowhere but up.

Among Fedderly’s upcoming outings, for instance, is the leading role of Alfredo in a 1997 “La Traviata” at the Kennedy Center, to be conducted by Placido Domingo and directed by Marta Domingo.

That’s quite a gig for a guy from Wisconsin Dells, Wis. (population 2,000), and Fedderly knows it.

“My paper in my hometown is doing some article on me,” says the soft-spoken tenor, 30, seated in his West Hollywood apartment, where he is surrounded by an elaborate array of traditional Christmas trappings, including a meticulously trimmed tree.

“I cringe at all my friends in Wisconsin Dells thinking ‘He’s an opera singer, how did that ever happen? What is he doing?’ ” Fedderly continues. “I don’t know how it happened. I never really would have thought it. I never had a goal of ‘When I grow up, I want to be an opera singer.’ ”

Yet an opera singer is indeed what this son of a mortician father and a homemaker mother has become--and one who’s garnering increasing acclaim.

In this fall’s LAMCO production of “The Flying Dutchman,” The Times’ Martin Bernheimer cited Fedderly’s “lyric finesse.” Last spring, Bernheimer praised Fedderly’s “uncommonly handsome and mellifluous Cassio” in “Otello,” as well as the “rare vocal warmth and finesse, plus histrionic sympathy” of his Ernesto in “Don Pasquale.”

All that polish can’t be chalked up to any early exposure to the form. “Where I grew up, I never even heard the word ‘opera,’ ” Fedderly says.

The Fedderly family home may not have been an opera-oriented household, but there was recreational singing. “I have three younger brothers, and two of us are [singing] professionally,” he says. “My youngest brother is in ‘Forever Plaid’ in Chicago. We’re like a barbershop quartet when we go home.”

Fedderly attended the University of Wisconsin, where he pursued an interest in musicals. Then, in his junior year, a teacher introduced him to opera. “[Those] voice lessons got to be so challenging that I got caught up in that, and it became much more interesting vocally than musical theater.”

A recipient of the prestigious Marilyn Horne scholarship, Fedderly went on to receive his master’s degree in voice from USC. While there, he was spotted by the LAMCO general director Peter Hemmings.

When Fedderly had only one semester to go at USC, Hemmings cast him as Flute in a production of “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Then, once the young singer had finished school, he moved into the opera’s resident-artist program.

The program--which takes emerging talents, gives them a stipend and casts them in a variety of roles in an arrangement not unlike that used by movie studios in the days when they used to keep a stable of players on hand--wasn’t formalized when Fedderly first joined the LAMCO.

“[It] was still really young,” he recalls. “We never said, ‘You’re a resident artist,’ but it was like, ‘You’re doing 20 weeks this year, then 30 weeks the next year,’ then after [about] two years you realized you’re a resident artist.”

The greatest benefit of such an apprenticeship--which is unusual among opera companies--is that it provides young singers with a reliable income, while giving them the opportunity to watch and work with seasoned professionals.

The down side, if there is one, is that the singers are obliged to remain in L.A. at a time when they might feel a need to be more widely seen and heard. (The overwhelming majority of opera auditions are still held in New York.)

Yet veterans of the program praise it. “I like where I am right now, so that had to be a good step,” Fedderly says. “I met and worked with some great people.”

“For the times I was thinking I wasn’t happy, I was also working with the best directors and conductors,” he continues. “Some of the best singers came in, and I was understudying them or able to watch them. And now that I’m going out and doing other things, I realize how much I learned and how much I’ve seen.”

Hemmings also serves as an advisor to the young artists, guiding their careers and opening doors when he feels it’s appropriate. Likewise, Hemmings makes it clear when he doesn’t want one of his singers making what he considers a bad move.

In Fedderly’s case, that meant dissuading the singer from taking any musical theater jobs. “Mr. Hemmings steered me away a number of times,” Fedderly says. “At the time, I left his office angry, and now I look back and he was definitely right.

“He guided me, and I’m happy about it. He has been instrumental in my career. I’m lucky I landed in a company that had someone like that at the top, that took a real interest.”

It was, in fact, Hemming’s helping hand that landed Fedderly his first Tom Rakewell. “He got my first ‘Rake’s Progress,’ four years ago in England, and that got the ball rolling,” says the singer. “Then I got good reviews, and that got me [productions of ‘The Rake’s Progress’ in] Cologne and Vienna, and that got me the movie.”

When it came to actually making the film, however, Fedderly had to make some adjustments. “It was a whole different technique,” he says. “The director was constantly [saying,] ‘Less, less’ until I felt like I was doing absolutely nothing.”

The L.A. connection also provided Fedderly with the opportunity to get to know Placido Domingo. “It was during the last ‘Otello’ that he asked me to do [‘La Traviata’] with him,” Fedderly says. “He’s been really supportive and helpful.”

Fedderly now spends about four or five months a year in L.A., and he estimates that he’ll be here for one or two operas per season over the next three or four years.

“I really like L.A.,” he says. “It’s home. The only thing is, I’m working mostly in Europe, and it makes the plane ride reeeeeally long.”

But Fedderly is also being offered better roles here in L.A. He can’t say what they are yet (since the contracts aren’t signed), but they do include a part in “Pagliacci” with Domingo next season.

Having such plans is one of the perks of success. “I do feel a little more secure,” Fedderly says. “Instead of looking at the one year ahead, I’ve got the next three years scheduled.

“I’m doing interesting roles, going to great places and starting to know more people around the world,” he continues. “I’m not too busy yet. I’m not a major workaholic. I like to have fun. So I’m really happy where I’m at.”

“The Rake’s Progress” airs Jan. 3 on “Great Performances,” KCET Channel 28, 9 p.m.