Like a store with faulty inventory control, the opera world has let its stock of female talent slip out of balance. The number of outstanding mezzo-sopranos seems to be increasing daily, while the current collection of sopranos -- especially those who can tackle the heavier, dramatic repertory -- is not nearly so abundant. Of course, opera talent can't be ordered up like a dozen morecartons of paper towels. So when a voice appears that seems able to fill out a sparsely populated roster, the opera world takes notice.

Among the soprano comers is Daniela Dessì, a favorite of La Scala music director Riccardo Muti and supertenor Plácido Domingo. Dessì is hardly a new face; since her debut in 1978, she has sung in many of the world's major opera houses and built a repertory of sixty operas, ranging from Monteverdi to Prokofiev. In 1995, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut, as Nedda in Pagliacci. In November 1998, she sang Mimì to Luciano Pavarotti's Rodolfo as part of the gala celebrating the tenor's thirtieth anniversary with the Met. This was followed by her Lyric Opera of Chicago debut, in mid-December, as Margherita in Boito's Mefistofele, opposite Samuel Ramey.

Dessì's voice is distinctly Italian in a faintly old-fashioned way -- penetrating, extravagant, unabashedly emotional, with a hint of Callas in the middle register. Though her singing doesn't win universal praise -- her performances can be variable, and top notes occasionally turn shrill -- her Margherita in Chicago was a potent combination of singing and acting.

Dessì was entirely believable as the naive Margherita in her opening scene, but her dark middle register hinted at an intriguing earthiness. In the final scene, as the stunned young woman wandered through a burned-out garden, Dessì's singing had a steely center, its ringing tone and wild flights conveying bitter knowledge and fervent regret.

Meeting me at the high-rise apartment in downtown Chicago that is her temporary headquarters during last winter's run of Mefistofele, the forty-one-year-old Dessì looks chic in tailored slacks, turtleneck and full jewelry.

"Margherita is not an easy character, dramatically or vocally," says the soprano -- "especially in Mefistofele. In [Gounod's] Faust she has more time to develop. In Mefistofele she has fifteen minutes in the beginning [of Act II] and half an hour at the end. In this very short time, she has to change her character completely. She goes from a sweet girl, pure and innocent, to a mother who kills her child. And vocally she changes a lot, from the generic lyric soprano to a dramatic soprano. It takes a lot of psychological concentration."

Quick changes have been a constant throughout Dessì's career. She relishes telling tales of her student days as a kind of operatic utility infielder at the Parma Conservatory and the Accademia Chigiana of Siena. Her professional life, too, has included an unusual number of last-minute calls from the likes of Domingo and Muti, asking her to hop on planes and, a few days later, sing roles new to her repertory.

Dessì tells these stories with a good-natured mixture of pride and astonishment at her own chutzpah. She is quick to understand most questions put to her in English but prefers to respond in Italian, relying on a translator during a long interview.

"I used to sing all the roles in the conservatory recitals," Dessì laughs -- "soprano, contralto, mezzo-soprano. When they needed somebody, they would say, 'Get Dessì.' I was even able to do the tenor parts."

Born in Genoa and raised in Brescia, an only child, Dessì started singing when she was eleven. Her first taste of opera success came early, when an aunt who was a singer took her to Rome Opera to try out as a supernumerary.

"I worked for three years there," said Dessì, "and that's where I started wanting to sing opera. I had a very big career as a super. I was one of the crowd in Aida, then a priestess and then a handmaiden. Then I was in Tosca, Turandot, Cavelleria Rusticana -- all the big stuff."

Minimum age for conservatory students was sixteen, but Dessì enrolled a year early, thanks to collusion between her mother and the conservatory director, who recognized talent when he heard it. She made her official debut in Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona at Savona's Opera Giocosa. During the next two years, she attracted attention by winning competitions, including first prize in Italy's prestigious RAI Auditorium competition in 1980. The event was televised, and Dessì was soon getting contract offers.

The soprano vividly recalls her first encounter with Muti, in 1987. She was singing at the festival in Ravenna, Muti's home, and was just returning to the stage after six months recuperating from a broken leg. She was still using a cane to get around.

The La Scala director came to her dressing room at intermission during the first performance. "He came in," says Dessì, "sat on the table, not a chair, and asked abruptly, 'How are you?' gesturing to the leg. I said, 'Fine, thank you.' I asked him to sit on the chair, and he said, 'No, no, no. Do you sing Rigoletto?'

"I said, 'No, not the [whole] opera.' He said, "I want to do a recording, and if you sing it, we'll do it.' I said, 'Okay.' Then he said, 'I want you to sing Le Nozze di Figaro, the Verdi Requiem' -- he had a huge list. I said, 'Let's do Rigoletto first, to get started.' Of course I didn't know the role," she concludes with an explosive laugh.

She had a similar experience with Domingo in 1985. His office called to ask if Miss Dessì would be interested in singing Otello with Domingo in Barcelona in a week's time. No, she responded emphatically, Miss Dessì would not. She didn't know the part. The time frame was impossible. Goodbye.

"But I started thinking about it during the night," Dessì recalls. "They called the next morning. They must have sensed something. I asked about the rehearsal schedule. It was impossible. I said, 'No, no, no, I can't.' The next minute I said, 'Okay, fine' -- and I hung up, and I went." The performances were a success, and in subsequent years, Dessì has often sung Desdemona opposite Domingo's Otello.

Dessì has always had an unusual facility for learning music. If necessary, she can learn one act of an opera in an hour. Ten days is about average for a complete opera. The key, she says, is finding the right concentration level.

"Rossini wrote a certain kind of music," she notes, "Mozart another type, Verdi still another. I enter into those modes -- the Puccini mode or Verdi mode -- and the music makes a strong impression. That way one learns more easily, because one learns the music from the inside."

She has managed to thrive at La Scala, working well with the famously mercurial Muti in that famously difficult house. Among her La Scala high points, she mentions Elisabetta in a 1992 Don Carlo, a high-profile new production by Franco Zeffirelli, conducted by Muti and starring Pavarotti. Coming up is the title role in Adriana Lecouvreur in January 2000.

"Muti is a great musician, and it is always easy to work with great musicians," Dessì offers. "His character is not so easy. He alternates from a moment where everything is wonderful to a moment when there are problems. Then he can get a bit harsh. As a musician, he helps you a lot. It's the reputation [for being difficult] that you hear about. When you really know him, he's a simpatico person."

Her assessment of La Scala itself is not so generous. "It's not an easy thing to work at La Scala," she says bluntly. "Beyond some people I've known and worked with there for many years, the atmosphere is very tense. It's widespread throughout the theater. They make singers very nervous. Their expectations are high, and they create tension. At La Scala, what's important is not so much the vocal maturity. That you must have for any theater. But you have to be very sure of yourself to sing at La Scala, so that you can overcome these negative currents."

American soprano Renée Fleming was the center of a controversy at La Scala last July when she was robustly booed on opening night of Lucrezia Borgia. Most opera professionals praised her performance and blamed La Scala's small cadre of fanatics, who arrive at opening nights with more or less arcane axes to grind. Dessì doesn't believe Fleming was booed because she is American. "It's not necessarily a difference in nationality," she says. "Audiences in Italy, not only at La Scala, are very critical. They boo Italians, too. We all still suffer from the fact that we can't all be Maria Callas." (Callas, it should be noted, also endured her share of boos at La Scala.)

In the fall of 1997, Dessì met Andrea Bocelli, the young cabaret singer turned operatic tenor, who attracted Pavarotti's attention and since has become a worldwide phenomenon, with records selling in the millions. In early 1998, she starred opposite Bocelli, who has been blind since age twelve, in a staged production of La Bohème in Sardinia. The opera was televised, but the video has yet to be released commercially.

"To be able to do what he did was almost a miracle," said Dessì. "His actions onstage were very believable. We had to do a lot of rehearsal, but he is a very sharp man and has great musical instincts. During one rehearsal, I made a move that hadn't been staged, and I worried that when he started to walk toward me he would go into the orchestra pit. So I took a big, sharp breath to indicate where I was. He said, 'Good. Now I will always know exactly where you are.'"

Dessì has followed wherever her voice led in moving from the early operas that provided her first professional roles, through Mozart, into Verdi and the verismo repertory that is her current focus. In coming seasons, she will sing in Giordano's Andrea Chénier, Fedora and La Cena delle Beffe, as well as Tosca and Verdi's Luisa Miller, Aida and Il Trovatore.

"My voice has always been a pure, lyric soprano," says Dessì. "I studied for a year as a mezzo in the conservatory, because my middle voice was very dark. But then I decided to go with soprano and have stayed with that."

Voices change over time, however, and Dessì is making the necessary adjustments. "After twenty years of singing," says Dessì, "I worry a bit about overtaxing the voice and balancing my roles. But since [my four-year-old son] Jacopo was born, I sing without getting tired. Maybe my metabolism has changed, or I have a different, more positive attitude. I try not to get into anything unless I think I can do it with a sense of joy."

WYNNE DELACOMA is classical-music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times.

 

Photos: © Paul Elledge 1999 (portrait), © Dan Rest/Lyric Opera of Chicago 1999 (Mefistofele), Marchiori Fotografia, Firenze/Opera News Archives (Gambler);

OPERA NEWS, June 1999 Copyright © 1999 The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Inc.