ON THE BEAT.

This month, tenor FRANK LOPARDO makes his Santa Fe Opera debut in THOR STEINGRABER's new production of Lucia di Lammermoor. No, that's not a misprint. Even though he's been on the opera scene for quite some time, it really is Lopardo's debut with the company he calls "the Salzburg of the United States." He auditioned for the company back in 1983, but nothing happened. "I tried like the dickens," he says. "Now, RICHARD GADDES has taken over the helm. He knows me from way back, from my first professional job, as Tamino at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis." After winding up his summer activities, Lopardo opens San Francisco's season in Rigoletto.

Recently, the tenor sang Rodolfo in La Boheme at the Met." I never thought when I was singing Don Ottavios and Taminos that I would go as heavy as Boheme," he says. "I don't think I'll get any heavier than Ballo -- that will be the extent of my Verdi. I've had offers for Don Carlo and Manrico and Forza. If I told you who offered them, you'd be surprised that they even thought to do these things. I guess I should [consider myself] lucky that no one's asked me to do Troyens. There's such a shortage of [beefy] tenors now, that if you have an easy high C, someone says,' Maybe you should sing Trovatore.' The world is always looking for the next Radames."

Lopardo, like many of his colleagues, has a tough time with the business end of the music profession. "I've been criticized a million times for not having an image. I'm just not sure that people are concentrating on the right thing. I'll tell you something funny. [In March,] I sang a performance at the Met in Boheme. I'm approaching 'Che gelida manina,'and as I start the aria, I hear someone from the audience yell,' CAN YOU SING LOUDER, MR. LOPARDO?' The man wasn't well. He was in a wheelchair, and he obviously was having a moment. He continued well into the soprano's aria, and he was later taken out of the theater. But what was interesting is that no one commented on my high C, but everyone commented for days and days on the disturbance. Everyone asked me, `How did you feel when everyone in the house heard him?'"

Lopardo has been singing long enough to spot a few trends. "It's amazing how the public is turning on to the smaller voice," he says. "I think there's much to be said about that. I was a body-builder when I was a kid, and the trend was to go in one or two years from lean and muscular to bulky, massive, gorilla muscles. And I think in a sense that is what is happening [in reverse] to the audience's taste. I don't want to call it 'settling,' but they're more apt to hear singers with smaller voices than they used to hear. People used to hear ETTORE BASTIANINI sing Verdi. Now they're hearing THOMAS HAMPSON. And the way record companies and the marketing people are always trying to anoint the next great star -- we thought VLADIMIR CHERNOV was the next great Verdi baritone, and we thought JOSE CURA was the next big tenor. There's a lot of 'Boy Cried Wolf' going on: you know, here's the next, and here's the next. You go and listen, and you think, 'Well, that's not even close.' And I pity the one who really does turn out to be the one, because by that time, people aren't going to bother to listen, because they've been fooled so many times."

In a funny way, SUMI JO's new album, Prayers, is an attempt to atone for the success of her pop recording, Only Love, which has sold a staggering 750,000 copies to date. "I thought," the soprano said recently, on a day off from singing Olympia in ROBERT CARSEN's production of Les Contes d'Hoffmann at Paris's Opera Bastille," that for this recording I should go back to my original voice. I also wanted to do something nobody had done before. So we collected all sorts of prayer songs: some Jewish music [Ravel's "Kaddisch"], some Latin [Caccini's "Ave Maria," arranged by STEVEN MERCURIO] and French [Faure's "Pie Jesu"], and some Bernstein ["Take Care of This House"] -- and Gigi ["Say a Prayer for Me Tonight"].

Although she has high hopes for the new disc, Jo isn't quite so sure about the cover art (pictured below). "Tell me the truth, did you recognize me? Do you think it's controversial? It was not my idea. It was the idea of a makeup artist for Vogue, and she works for top models. She wanted me to look mysterious -- beyond all of the earth. Some thing celestial, like a goddess. Do you know why my eyes look the way they do? When you cook in the kitchen, and you use aluminum foil -- well, we put it over my eyes!"

Jo continues her working relationship with bel canto maestro RICHARD BONYNGE. They'll collaborate soon on a recording of Meyerbeer's Dinorah for Decca/London. And in January 2003, they'll be together at the Sydney Opera House for Lucia di Lammermoor.