Mezzo-soprano Jossie Perez is only 28 but rising quickly

COSTA MESA, Calif. - Jossie Perez, the mezzo-soprano who is singing the title role in "The Italian Girl in Algiers" this week with Opera Pacific, was the very picture of self-assurance when she arrived at the company's offices recently for an interview. She wore an ultra-mini denim skirt, a low-cut blouse and big, brassy earrings that set off her dramatically dark features. Not a woman, apparently, who's afraid to strut her stuff.

"The characterization comes really easy for me," said the Puerto Rican-born singer of her part in the Rossini comedy, and we tended to believe her. "This is a woman that is very ahead of her times, she is very independent, she knows how to get what she wants through manipulating men, and she does." Perez's favorite role is Carmen, that sexiest of man manipulators; she'll sing it next season here.

Underneath the surface, though, is a 28-year-old singer just as vulnerable as the next. A bout of asthma has settled in right in time for rehearsals - she's seeing a doctor later that afternoon. She says she's a nervous wreck on the day of a performance and sits at home alone watching television to calm herself. "I mean, I'm unbearable to deal with."

And she's still licking her wounds after a recent flap at the Metropolitan Opera, when conductor Bertrand de Billy replaced her in a production of Gounod's "Romeo and Juliet." She was to sing the trouser role of Stephano, but the conductor had a smaller voice in mind.

"And it came down to either him or me, and yeah, so ..." Perez says, trailing off. "But I still got paid - so, paid vacation."

"I was extremely hurt," she continues. She had rehearsed the role, the cast was great and the management was apparently happy with her. But it was not to be.

"It's like someone taking away a toy from a kid," she says. In fact, she was still offered the first two performances of "Romeo" in compensation, but turned it down. "What singer in their right mind would choose to do that after knowing that they didn't want them? No way."

Perez's rise has been quick. Her parents were both singers. Her father always dreamed of making it in opera, but World War II intervened. In her childhood, singing came naturally and she sang in church choirs with her parents. She decided she wanted to be an opera singer herself while attending high school in Orlando, Fla. Attendance at an Orlando Opera dress rehearsal did it.

"They were playing Samson and Delilah' and what an opera - every art form on one stage, it's unbelievable. So, I was blown away, and I remember turning around to a friend and saying,That's what I'm going to do.'" She auditioned for the opera chorus and made it.

After high school Perez was off to the New England Conservatory of Music, where she took her first official voice lessons. Her teacher had a little motivational work to do.

"She kicked my (rear) a couple of times," Perez says, "... but it made me learn. I quickly realized that I had to put some hard work into it, because up to that point it had come so easy for me."

Whatever her teacher said worked. In her junior year, Perez won the Met's National Council auditions and became a member of the company's prestigious Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, where in addition to an aggressive training regime, she sang small roles and covered big ones at Lincoln Center.

Her Met debut was as Mercedes in a production of "Carmen," with Olga Borodina in the title role, Roberto Alagna as Don Jose, Rene Pape as Escamillo and James Levine conducting - a heady start.

"It was my dream to win the competition and it was my dream to be in the program. That was how I imagined things would go." She later won the Zarzuela Prize in Placido Domingo's Operalia Competition, which led to her singing Idamante to the tenor's Idomeneo at Washington National Opera.

But despite her successes, the job of being a professional opera singer has been tougher than she expected. "Once you encounter those hurdles, and once you realize how many of the people that are in this business are not in the business for the right reasons, you start reevaluating." Song recitals are a strong interest, and she offers them as charity fundraisers in the hopes of developing that part of her career.

Rossini's carb-loaded comedy from 1813 - with its bouncy rhythms and crowded, breakneck ensembles, one of the composer's first hits - would appear to be a great vehicle for the lively singer. The part of Isabella, an Italian Girl who finds herself marooned in Algiers, was originally written for a contralto, so it lies a little low for her mezzo voice, Perez says, but she compensates by adding some ascending runs to show off her high voice. She especially enjoys the comic relationship with her Mustafa here, friend and baritone Richard Bernstein.

Not that she expects the opera to go without a hitch. Perhaps the asthma has got her thinking. But she recalls a lesson she learned from Borodina back in that "Carmen" at the Met.

"I remember Borodina was sick as a dog - with her little glass of tea before going on - and she did it. And it taught me, most of the time you're not going to be in good voice. That's what's hard about being a singer in general - that it's rare when you're in perfect voice for a performance. But you still do it."

---

(c) 2006, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.). Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.