Growing pains: Laura Claycomb doesn't want to be typed as just another high-flying coloratura. She wants to be taken seriously. Very seriously.

Size matters to opera singers, it's not something discussed in polite company, though. Certainly, soprano Laura Claycomb takes exception to the subject, when it is mentioned in relation to her voice.

"I find the premise to be kind of strange," she says. "What is big, what is small? I mean, could you hear me?" She is referring to her performance in 1999 as Giulietta in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi in Los Angeles Opera's cavernous, acoustically challenged Dorothy Chandler Pavilion--and yes, we could, with no difficulty. "Well then, that's the answer, isn't it?" she replies.

Claycomb, born in Texas and now based in Brussels, has earned a fine reputation for performing bel canto, Baroque and contemporary repertoire with a bejeweled clarity and ease. The voice is indeed small(ish), bur it is both opulent and pin-point focused, it carries, and the high stuff just pops out. In public, she'll sing a G above high C. On a good day in practice, she says, she can nail a B-flat above that.

Claycomb describes her ideal role as having a high, legato line and plentiful opportunities for pianissimo nuance. In performance, she savors these moments in magisterial displays of elastic phrasing. "Anything that needs a delicate touch, I think, is something I can pull off really well, and that I can really shine in and bring something special to."

Roles that fit Claycomb's criteria, in addition to her star-turn as L.A.'s Giulierta, include Donizetti's Lucia, Marie (Fille du Regiment) and Linda di Chamounix (in which she made her La Scala debut), Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare, Gilda (performed at Opera de Lausanne, Opera Bastille, New Israeli Opera, Teatro Municipal de Santiago de Chile, Bilbao and Houston Grand Opera), Zerbinetta, and Amanda in Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre.

Claycomb's art hasn't invariably been appreciated fully in her native country. "They tend to cist with larger voices in the U.S. for repertoire that they would cast with a smaller, not as resounding, huge voice in Europe," she says. "And I think that also has affected taste [in the U.S.]. Because people are of course more impressed with that. It goes back to the whole vein-popping-out-of-your-neck thing. Because they're more impressed with bigger sound and 'Oh, she's making an effort' and all of that, more than 'Oh, she's doing what's written on the page.'"

Now, however, her career is beginning to take off in the U.S. She's a regular visitor to Los Angeles and San Francisco, where she is a favorite of both Esa-Pekka Salonen and Michael Tilson Thomas. Houston Grand Opera is another faithful suitor, and a growing legion of followers is noticing more than her singing. Her graceful demeanor onstage, and the sense of the moment she brings, are also the result of a quiet mind. Sh& supremely comfortable up there.