Venus de Millo

OPERA

She's been compared to great divas of the past, but that's too much praise for a soprano who's only twenty-eight years old. It's also praise of the wrong kind: what's remarkable is not just that Aprile Millo may someday remind us of Mme. X or Mme. Y but that she's begun to bring their long-dead world to life, now, in the age of Cyndi Lauper and stereo TV. You can hear the Italian side of her Italian-American heritage in her authoritative vocal style; the American side peeps through in her grander-than-life acting, which she learned in part from classic Hollywood films. What's the dream from the past she works so hard to keep alive? "Compare Clark Gable to Matt Dillon," she replies. Her ties to a culture all of us understand help explain why you'll want to be at the Metropolitan when she sings her first Aida there this month. Metropolitan Opera House. New York. (10/16 and 10/23)

GREGORY SANDOW