Men open doors for this mezzo

Composer Osvaldo Golijov has this to say about 23-year-old mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor: “Maybe she’s too young to be scared.”

Indeed, O’Connor -- a recent USC voice graduate and a master’s candidate at UCLA -- seems far more excited than apprehensive as she prepares to sing the role of Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca in the Los Angeles premiere of “Ainadamar,” Golijov’s first opera, at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Sunday.

In a conversation at the hall last week -- it was her first visit -- the tall, raven-haired O’Connor studied her surroundings with interest rather than awe, wondering how exactly the opera would be staged for a chamber performance in the auditorium. “At Tanglewood, we had an orchestra in the pit. Here, there’s no pit,” she observed.

Much of O’Connor’s confidence stems from her having originated the role of Lorca last summer at the Tanglewood Music Center, the teaching arm of the Boston Symphony’s summer home in the Berkshires.

Soprano Dawn Upshaw, who also will reprise a role in the opera here, was the only professional singer in the original cast of “Ainadamar,” which tells the story of Lorca’s execution in 1936 by the fascists at Ainadamar, the Fountain of Tears, during the Spanish Civil War. Upshaw portrays real-life actress Margarita Xirgu, who created the title character in Lorca’s play “Mariana Pineda.” The rest of the roles in the opera went to student singers attending the Tanglewood center as members of its fellowship program, which admitted them on the basis of audition tapes.

While developing the opera there with librettist David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly”), Golijov at first considered O’Connor to portray a character called Death. But the Argentine-born composer changed his mind, he says, after he listened to her on tape and saw what she looked like.

“I had said to David, ‘Let’s create a character for Death,’ because there is a Death character in much of Lorca’s work, like in ‘Blood Wedding,’ ” the composer said in a telephone conversation during rehearsals for the Disney performance. “I had in mind a dark and sultry voice. But when I heard Kelley, I was completely blown away. I also had a picture of her, and I said: ‘Look, she could actually be him.’ It was like an epiphany.”

Though some critics have speculated that Golijov’s decision to cast the role with a woman was a comment on Lorca’s homosexuality, the composer insists not. In any event, the Death character eventually ended up on the operatic cutting room floor -- and O’Connor’s role as Lorca grew.

“When she is in the wig and costume, it’s scary how she resembles Lorca,” Golijov says. “I think it’s the eyebrows she has, those deep eyes. It’s tremendous.” But more important than her looks, he says, is her voice: “It’s very striking. It’s like an unforgettable tone that gets seared into your mind and your heart. There is something very, very special and difficult to define.”

Critics who saw the opera at Tanglewood found O’Connor equally beguiling. Although some quibbled with Golijov’s decision to cast a woman as Lorca, O’Connor “brought a lustrous deep mezzo voice and a focused stage presence” to the role, Boston Globe reviewer Richard Dyer wrote.

O’Connor, a Fresno native, recalls with a characteristically explosive laugh how she reacted when Golijov first suggested that she take the role of Lorca. Not that she wanted to argue, but this wasn’t exactly typecasting. “He’s a man. He’s a Spanish man. He’s a gay Spanish man,” she said.

Now, on the eve of singing the part again, she feels so comfortable with it that she can’t imagine anyone else as Lorca -- and hopes that Golijov continues to feel the same way. She says that while working on the opera, “he based it on all of us -- he catered to our voices. I love this piece. I listen to it and I just cry, it’s so beautiful. I would have been very hurt if he didn’t ask me to do it.”

To get into character, she adds, all she had to do was observe Golijov at work. “He wanted me to be more flamboyant, more extroverted, because the Europeans are so much more extroverted. So I would just watch him,” she says. “It helped me to be with him, because in a way he’s like what Lorca would be. I get entranced, I could listen to him for days, he was just so charming.”

O’Connor notes that singing an important role in a world premiere by Golijov has already jump-started her fledgling career; at auditions, she is often asked to perform her aria from “Ainadamar” instead of more traditional repertoire. (Local audiences will have another opportunity to hear her at a free concert May 2 at Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church.)

She believes that “Ainadamar,” which borrows heavily from Spanish popular music, offers the same kind of appeal to young audiences as Baz Luhrmann’s updated production of “La Boheme,” now at the Ahmanson Theatre, and its youthful cast -- although she worries about the trend of pushing young singers into lead roles before their voices are ready.

“I think it would be great if opera could kind of cross over, combine with music that people could hum when they left,” she muses. “Puccini did it -- you can leave ‘Madame Butterfly’ humming some of those tunes. We’ve kind of gotten away from that.”

But not Golijov, O’Connor says.

“My aria is really, really beautiful. He keeps telling me they’re going to make a techno version, that it’s going to be a dance mix.”

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‘Ainadamar’

Where: Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: Sunday 7:30 p.m.

Price: $15-$40

Contact: (323) 850-2000