Femme du monde.(Natalie Dessay)

Natalie Dessay may sing soubrette roles -- but inside, there's dramatic soprano fighting to get out

For much of the two days before she opened in a new production of Bellini's La Sonnambula at La Scala, Natalie Dessay sat and cried. In a decade of professional singing, she had seldom been so nervous about a performance. Although she had performed the demanding role of Amina in Lyon and Bordeaux, singing it at La Scala was going to require a massive dose of coraggio. The company's audience has a long memory where Sonnambula is concerned: there was Maria Callas's history-making appearance in Luchino Visconti's 1955 production, and some of the theater's other notable interpreters in the ensuing years include Joan Sutherland, Renata Scotto and June Anderson.

All those artists had distinguished themselves in bel canto repertoire. Dessay, a soprano leger most noted for her show-stopping interpretations of Olympia, Zerbinetta and the Queen of the Night, had little experience in bel canto repertoire. She recalled, no doubt, reports of Renee Fleming being booed vociferously by the La Scala audience on opening night of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia in 1998. With Amina, Dessay was taking a walk in a dangerous neighborhood, and she knew it.

As it happened, the opening was a success with both audience and critics. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica called her "a splendid Amina, with a beautiful voice and sterling technique." On the evening of the second performance, however, there was a strange, unresolved quality to the audience's response to Dessay. There was little applause after "Ah, non credea mirarti" (perhaps a response to Pier' Alli's ridiculous staging?), but she was greeted warmly at her final curtain call. Scattered boos were reserved for other cast members (including the Alessio and the Teresa, which is sort of like booing the Notary in Der Rosenkavalier or Inez in Il Trovatore). Conductor Maurizio Benini was greeted with downright hostility. "Is like banda -- you know banda?" muttered a Milan dowager, who has occupied the same orchestra seats for the past fifty years. "We are used to Muti. This man is nothing. And what a silly production." What did they think of Dessay's Amina? Silence. "Ahem ... she is good. Very good. The voice is lovely. Not thin. Si. She is good." More silence.

Italian audiences may continue to regard Dessay as a bel canto interloper for now, but she plans to move further in that direction. She's singing Lucie de Lammermoor (in French) in Lyon and Paris next season, and in 2004, she brings the original version of Lucia to Lyric Opera of Chicago -- complete, she hopes, with glass harmonica. On one hand, she's adamant about not doing anything that will tax her vocally; on the other, she doesn't want to get bored. Many a gifted light coloratura has cut short a promising career by performing a handful of soubrette roles over and over, with the same saucy toss of the head, the same hands-on-hips pose -- only to see her career run quickly out of steam while audiences dozed. "After ten years of my career, I have done all the [standard] roles I can do in this repertoire. I don't want to repeat," says Dessay. "I have to progress, to work on the voice, and to move on to something else, something that's more interesting, acting-wise."

Dessay worked very hard preparing the La Scala Sonnambulas -- "like a dog, really," she says. "My [usual] style is Mozart, Strauss or French opera, not at all Italian bel canto. It's new for me, and at the beginning, I felt like an elephant in a shop of glass. There is this huge tradition, but you have to make your own music." She worked extensively on Italian technique with her teacher, tenor Jean-Pierre Blivet, and with British pianist-coach Gerald Martin-Moore. A few years ago, while in New York performing Zerbinetta at the Metropolitan Opera, she also stole a few hours with one of the immortal Aminas, Renata Scotto. In the end, it all paid off. In La Scalds magnificent acoustic, Dessay's singing had great immediacy. She exhibited a secure grasp of bel canto style and was sparing in her use of portamento. "In Bellini, when it's specifically written so you have to use it, I use it. When it's not written, I don't. I'm careful about it. When I studied with Renata Scotto, she told me, `No portamento!' But I think it's not right never to use it." Had Scotto forgotten that she herself used lots of portamento during her peak years? "Yes, she did use it. But after that, she probably realized that it was too much. She was great. Very generous. She's a big example for me."

Even diehard lovers of bel canto have a tough time making excuses for the libretto of La Sonnambula: a young girl in a Swiss Alps village has a habit of sleepwalking in her white nightgown, at which times she is mistaken for a phantom by her dimwitted friends and neighbors. Eventually, she sleepwalks into the bedroom of a nobleman, causing tongues to wag and her fiance, Elvino, to dump her for her rival, Lisa. In the end, the truth emerges, none too convincingly, and Amina gets a big finish with "Ah, non credea mirarti" and "Ah! non giunge." The Met, which has never made a habit of programming bel canto works, had decided some time ago to mount Sonnambula for Cecilia Bartoli, in the lower-keyed edition Bellini prepared for mezzo Maria Malibran. But when Bartoli withdrew because of artistic differences with the company, the Met, surprisingly, decided to keep Sonnambula on the schedule and hand it over to Dessay for the 2002-03 season.