Opera diva Peters kicks off MCA season> Gala celebrates UMaine capital campaign

The ninth season of the Maine Center for the Arts got off to a sparkling start Saturday with a performance by Metropolitan Opera diva Roberta Peters. Although Peters was the highlight of the evening, her concert was not the only component of the gala.

For the first time in the history of the Maine Center, the high-dollar event combined two University of Maine functions: the kickoff of the performing-arts lineup and a celebration of the success UM has had with a nearly six-year-long, $54.4 million capital campaign.

The evening’s program began unusually, with a spate of brief addresses by university officials, including Celebration Chairwoman Anne A. Collins, UM President Fred Hutchinson, Campaign Chairman William D. Johnson and Robert J. Holmes Jr., vice president for development. The audience also viewed “Our Picture Is Complete,” a 9-minute video detailing the campaign’s accomplishments, such as 12 new or renovated facilities, 222 scholarships and 22 new professorships.

At the completion of the official business, Peters, a vision of true beauty and talent, took over, with 21 songs plus three encores. Her program was designed to appeal to opera fans, who know Peters’ place among coloratura greats, and general audiences.

Joined by ebullient pianist Tim Lindberg, Peters sang a repertoire of works by Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern, to name a few. Whether it was the lovely tones of “The Last Rose of Summer” or the “zings” of “Italian Street Song,” Peters assured her status as one of the greatest American singers of her time.

And even when her glorious voice was out of synch with the style of the music (imagine a diva singing the jazzy “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”), she had all the pizazz to make it work. Few singers could challenge an audience in this way and succeed with such aplomb. But Peters’ enormous ability and charming warmth are the keys that can open some unexpected doors. She even performed a spiffy duet with Lindberg, and had the audience in stitches over the combination of his fine sell-a-song voice and her virtuosity.

As entertaining as the pop songs were, however, the dynamite moments of the concert were a handful of arias during the second half of the program. Peters is best known for her arias, and it’s easy to see why. Her gift is the amazingly perfect match of a music style and the exact type of voice for which it was written. That purity of combination is the stuff of great art, and Peters brought that point home in two Puccini arias (from “Gianni Schicchi” and “La Boheme”). Selections from Franz Lehar’s “The Merry Widow,” which has become her theme opera, brought the house down, and led to the encores. The final piece, “God Bless America,” had the audience on its feet and singing.

After the concert, Peters attended a champagne reception at the center’s Bodwell Area and greeted fans. The amicability and graciousness she had exhibited onstage extended to her conversations with concert-goers. She proved that after more than four decades of singing the good stuff, she’s got class, talent and remarkably good spirits to wow audiences for a long time to come.