The lusciousness of melancholy

For soprano Hei-Kyung Hong, the third time was the charm. The glamorous singer, who captured local attention in 2002 when she sang Liu in Los Angeles Opera’s “Turandot,” was originally scheduled to make her recital debut for the company in January.

But La Scala beckoned, and the recital was postponed until Saturday. Then the Ojai Music Festival requested the opera’s orchestra, and the resulting rescheduling forced her program to be put off again. So it was only Sunday afternoon that Hong at last conquered a sizable audience at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Hong has a creamy, luscious, dark-toned soprano. She is a poised, elegant singer more intent upon spinning long, even lines than painting words. Her top is brilliant and thrilling. There can be some patchiness in her midrange. Her trill, like that of many singers, leaves a little to be desired. But her embellishments are gracious and executed with an easy naturalness.

There was a prevailing sense of melancholy and loss in her selections, which began with a set of Baroque arias and ended with music by Lehar and Catalani. In between, she sang three French songs, three German lieder and four Korean songs. Last year, she made a recording of orchestrated Korean songs for Virgin Classics.

Only in the last of the Korean pieces, Du-Nam Cho’s “Bird Song” -- the sole piece not translated in the program -- did a playful side of Hong emerge. Using mimicking hand gestures, she suggested a curious dialogue -- or was it a wooing or competition? -- between two birds: a simple-minded cuckoo and a more eloquent creature.

Not even her opener, Paisiello’s “Nel cor piu non mi sento” (My heart no longer feels) -- with its images of love stinging, poking, pinching and chewing the singer -- elicited such a lighthearted interpretation.

Otherwise, the program was generally serious and even a bit grim. To an ear untutored in Korean and unfamiliar with the repertory, the selections by Dong-Jin Kim (“New Arirang”), Dong-Sun Chae “(Missing You”) and Sung-Tae Kim (“Dongshimcho”) evoked the emotional weight of many Russian art songs.

Hong’s most expansive and emotional singing occurred in “Ebben? Ne andro lontano” (Well, I will go far away) from Catalani’s “La Wally”; her purest in “O del mio dolce ardor” (Oh, beloved object of my sweet desire) from Gluck’s “Paride ed Elena”; her most dramatic in Cleopatra’s Act 3 lament from Handel’s “Giulio Cesare.”

If there was a weakness, it was a lack of individuality in characterization. Even in the repetitions, whether embellished, as in the Baroque pieces, or not, we heard a certain sameness. Surely the second lament of the lovesick hunter in “Vilja,” from Lehar’s “The Merry Widow,” should sound more despairing than the first.

But if Hong did not rise to this level of differentiation, neither did she fall below the high level of beautiful singing.

Brian Zeger was her discreet, understated accompanist. She sang three encores: “O mio babbino caro” (Oh, my beloved daddy) from Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi,” Marguerite’s Jewel Song from Gounod’s “Faust” and a fifth Korean song, “The Golden Mountain.”