Heidi Stober's sound technique allows her to bend a pliant, alluring coloratura soprano — complete with dead-on acuti — in service of each role she inhabits. Stober sang a glamorous Poppea in Handel's Agrippina for New York City Opera in October. She took to the Santa Fe Opera stage like a fury as La Folie (Folly) in Rameau's Platée in summer 2007. She even stole notices in trousers last April, as Oscar in James Robinson's production of Un Ballo in Maschera in Boston and Denver. Now she catches a ride on Robinson's well-traveled Entführung aus dem Serail — set on the Orient Express — singing Blonde in Houston this month.

Offstage, Stober has a fresh, unassuming air, but anyone who saw her in Platée last summer will find it difficult to believe when she says, "I've never seen myself as a funny person in life. My sister is the comedian in our family, with all these one-liners that have people rolling." In Laurent Pelly's blissfully chaotic staging — with its frisky, high-energy dance troupe, fantastical costumes and cosmic lighting — Stober sang La Folie, the opera's lunacy personified, and proved that at the eye of the storm is utter calm. Here was a legitimate actress who could be hysterically funny standing absolutely still. But she could also shoot her voice into the auditorium, true to Rameau's angular style, like sparklers against a night sky.

The twenty-nine-year-old Wisconsin native honed her skills with theater classes at Lawrence University, where she received her degree in vocal performance. The lessons have served during the rise of directors in opera. "You have to be able to make it real for yourself," she notes. "If you're out there as an actor onstage just doing what someone's asked of you and not making it organic for yourself, I think an audience can sense that." After graduate school at New England Conservatory, she attended the Houston Grand Opera Studio for young artists and sang Norina, Susanna and Drusilla with the company. She would love to set her stamp on Strauss, and she has the right voice for a limpid Sophie.

For Stober, these roles do not merely make up an easy Fach to follow. Rather than dwell on the high E in "Durch Zärtlichkeit," Stober talks of Blonde's spunk, Poppea's conceit, Pamina's journey. One might say, she prepares the music but ultimately presents a character on the stage. "Technique in singing is a big, big thing for me," she explains, "but I have to, in the moment of performing, let that go." It is that quality that makes Stober's performances such an exciting ride.

OUSSAMA ZAHR

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