Delores Ziegler Performs With Assurance

Good news for lovers of the indoor summer concert: Many opportunities to avoid the al fresco environment remain. At Cal State Long Beach, through July 25, inside concerts abound. One of the first of these showed off not only a distinguished American singer, but also the virtues of the Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Sunday night.

Appearing at the Cal State Summer Arts Festival, the American mezzo-soprano Delores Ziegler gave a serious, satisfying recital in the 1,162-seat Carpenter auditorium. Handsomely if unassertively assisted by pianist Massimiliano Murrali, the active singer performed arias by Mozart, Richard Strauss and Massenet, and song-groups by Mozart, Brahms, Strauss, Debussy, Copland and Britten, with assurance and point.

Just 13 seasons after her debut with New York City Opera--since then, she has gone on to appear in major opera houses on both sides of the Atlantic--Ziegler commands the musical and technical versatility to be considered a specialist in all that she sings, possessed of admirable taste, intelligence and talent.

Are there holes in her arsenal of dramatic resources? Few could be identified Sunday night. Ziegler’s subtle approach to text shows her sensitivity to meaning and her ability to project feeling; only in moments did her delivery emerge generalized rather than deeply specific.

What she sang most touchingly--Brahms’ “Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen,” Debussy’s “La Flu^te de Pan,” Mozart’s “Als Luise die Briefe”--Ziegler caressed most carefully. When she came to grief through oversinging, as in the Composer’s Aria from “Ariadne auf Naxos,” she seemed to be overstating the drama rather than the content of the texts.