Diva: Ashley Putnam Makes Merry With `Widow' Role

Preview: Seattle Opera's "Merry Widow," in eight performances April 24 through May 8 at the Opera House, with Ashley Putnam and Robert Orth, directed by Linda Brovsky, conducted by Heinz Scheffler ($28-$95; 389-7676). ------------------------------------------------------------------- She's "the most beautiful woman in all of opera," according to Seattle Opera director Speight Jenkins.

And when soprano Ashley Putnam takes the stage this Saturday in the title role of Lehar's "The Merry Widow," local opera fans will see and hear a diva who doesn't fit the traditional mode. Tall and slim, with clear skin and wide-set eyes, Putnam is the kind of singing actress who can be believable in the come-hither role of Hanna, the merry widow who's the toast of the opera.

"This is a real glamour role," Putnam said last week during a short break in rehearsals, "and I have to work hard to justify the tremendous emphasis on this character. There has to be some force of energy, some star quality, that justifies what everybody in the opera is saying about Hanna and how special she is.

"Fortunately, I've just been to a costume fitting and I can tell you the costumes are spectacular. It helps so much to feel great when you're bringing this character alive before an audience."

It has been more than a decade since Putnam sang at Seattle Opera, and a lot has happened in that intervening time. Hers has been one of the most striking and controversial stories in recent opera history. When Putnam burst upon the opera scene in 1976, she was a 23-year-old student who knocked everyone dead at the Metropolitan Opera final auditions. Only two years later, at an unheard-of 25, she was singing Violetta in "La Traviata" at the New York City Opera.

Fans and critics raved about this new wunderkind with the stratospheric high notes that allowed her to sing the big coloratura roles such as Violetta and Lucia (in "Lucia di Lammermoor").

"This was just about the time when Beverly Sills and Joan Sutherland were both getting ready to retire," Putnam remembers, "and immediately everyone started saying I was the new Sutherland, the new Sills. It was very exciting, an explosion - overnight I was on the cover of `Opera News.'

"But it also was an enormous burden. There was a lot of jealousy and a lot of resentment. Most of all, I wasn't the new Beverly Sills. I was the new Ashley Putnam. Those high notes that were getting me all the attention were notes I probably was never meant to sing. Somehow I developed this high extension to my voice during college, and it wasn't just head voice; I pulled the whole voice up for those notes. You can't do that for long; my physical instrument just wasn't meant to do it."

So much attention was focused on Putnam and the fate of those high notes that when this unnatural extension began to disappear, a catastrophic period of self-doubt and stage fright made the soprano wonder whether she could go on singing.

"By the time I was 30, those high notes were gone," Putnam says. "Today, at 40, I have the normal lyric soprano range. I went through a huge grieving process, though, about losing that repertoire and letting everybody down."

What saved Putnam's sanity, as well as her career, was a turn toward Europe, where she was not yet known as a coloratura canary. For eight years, she sang a variety of repertoire very successfully in major European houses. Putnam now feels she has found a better niche. As a specialist in the German, Slavic and some French repertoire (Strauss, Janacek, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Gounod, Dvorak), she is getting a lot of work and singing "more intelligently" than before.

Her marriage to California neurosurgeon Jeff Randall has given her career more balance, Putnam feels; she now schedules fewer engagements, keeping active both in this country and in Europe.

"You can't stay out of the limelight too long," she says, "or people forget you. You know the five stages of the opera career: `Who is Ashley Putnam?' `Get me Ashley Putnam.' `I want an Ashley Putnam type.' `Get me a young Ashley Putnam.' `Who is Ashley Putnam?' "

"So far, I hope I haven't fallen into the last two categories yet! I still love singing, and I love making that connection with the audience. I feel very lucky about the way my career has turned out; I've found a whole different world, and I'm enjoying it."