Answering Role Call

Critics and audiences have commented on bass-baritone Richard Bernstein’s electrifying stage presence. But off stage, the singer turns out to be surprisingly modest and reserved.

“Something happens to me when I walk through the stage door,” Bernstein said over a recent lunch at a Costa Mesa restaurant.

“No matter what state I’m in as far as what’s happening in my life, I can go to the theater and become Don Giovanni, Figaro, Escamillo, whatever part I’m singing, even if it’s just a rehearsal.”

Expect that transformation today when Bernstein, 33, begins singing Mozart’s Figaro for Opera Pacific, through Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

A native New Yorker and the youngest of four children, Bernstein comes to his stage presence quite naturally.

His mother, who now lives in Atlanta, is a theater director. His father, now a resident of Colorado Springs, is a psychologist. The two met in community theater.

Brother Bradley is a composer. Sister Didi is an actress. Brother Andrew is a photographer.

“My family was always supportive of my singing,” Bernstein said. “They all said, ‘Richie, you have this voice. You have to pursue this.’

“My family always believed that you would find something that you would excel in and when you had found that, just keep at it and trust and believe in that.”

Though he sang from childhood, he began studying voice seriously at Arizona State University, then moved after two years to USC to complete his degree.

He began singing in the L.A. Opera chorus in 1988, moving up to sing his first Figaro in 1994.

“L.A. Opera had always given me incredible opportunities,” he said. “They were always incredibly generous.”

Despite that, he moved to New York in 1995.

“I was getting fantastic experience at the L.A. Opera. I was basically in everything they had done until I left. But what I also needed was to get the experience of performing in other places.

“What made me want to go back to New York was that I realized you can’t be a great Figaro or a great Don Giovanni if you only [sing the role] once a year.

“There are many levels of an operatic career, and to get to the next level would be doing auditions, to be in New York where they have auditions all the time and where many people can hear you.”

He fulfilled a childhood dream by making his Metropolitan Opera debut--as Zuniga in Bizet’s “Carmen”--when he was 29.

How does Bernstein balance the vocal and the dramatic required in opera?

“Each time I sing Figaro, I hear something different, and every time that I’m staged in ‘Figaro’ I try and let all my conceptions of Figaro go and listen to the director and see what he has to say and go with that,” he said.

“And then put my--Richard’s--Figaro, back in.”

Bernstein will return to Opera Pacific in April to sing the four villains in Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffmann.”

“Villains are attractive to play,” he said.

But he added it will be a stretch for him to create the role of Laurent in Tobias Picker’s new opera, “Therese Raquin,” scheduled to premiere next year in Dallas.

“Laurent’s evil, and he has to kill someone and he has to beat his lover--and where am I going to find that? I’m the most unaggressive person. I’ve never been in a fight in my life. Where am I going to find that?

“I thought, ‘I need to go to a prison and probably meet with some extremely violent people.’ I have no violence in me, at all, whatsoever. I’m going to have to find that, at least work with an acting coach to find that.

“Up until now, I’ve always been able to find part of Richard in all of the parts. So I’m looking forward to the challenge dramatically of learning how to become something that there is no Richard in.”

To stay in shape, he maintains a daily regimen that includes vocalizing and physical exercise.

“I try and stay in the best physical state I can because if I get sick I can’t sing, and that’s my livelihood,” he said. “Also, I liken what we do as being athletes--maybe minor athletes, but it’s athletic. ‘Figaro’ is a long opera. It can be exhausting.”

Though he sees Puccini’s Scarpia and other more dramatic roles down the line, he wants to stay with Mozart and bel canto repertory for a while.

“I think I was definitely given this gift [of singing] and that it would be a sin if I didn’t to the best of my abilities to develop what I was given and give it back,” he said.

“That’s why I love singing in front of people, because I feel like this music--this phenomenon that Mozart was--to be able to do that, I feel so lucky, that I want to give it to the people, to try to transform them in the way it transforms me.”

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Opera Pacific will present Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” today, Thursday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $32-$107. (800) 346-7372.

Chris Pasles can be reached at (714) 966-5602 or by e-mail at chris.pasles@latimes.com.