The Bold Soprano

June Anderson takes New York by storm this month with her Carnegie Hall debut

"They all think I'm difficult, but if they want

me to sing, it's their choice."

'Opera has gotten too big for its britches," complains June Anderson, a soprano who takes the responsibilities of her diva-hood seriously. She's good enough to get away with remarks like that; in an era short on grand and glorious operatic voices, hers is pure gold, showering audiences with cascades of glittering coloratura, the product of a diamond-hard technique, a razor-sharp intelligence, and dimples of iron.

The thirty-eight-year-old, Bostonbred Anderson is a fighter and a winner. After majoring in French at Yale and being the youngest-ever finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Auditions, she launched her career with a contract at the New York City Opera. It proved a slow, difficult start, marked by keen rivalry with other fledgling stars such as Carol Vaness, and in 1982 Anderson sped things up by moving to Europe. Soon she was leading the fast track, as the public in Italy, France, and Britain acclaimed her virtuoso interpretations of the title characters of Rossini's Semiramide, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, and Verdi's La Traviata. In 1989 she made a triumphant debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera in Verdi's Rigoletto, and since then the city can't get enough of her. On December 12 she will give her first solo recital at Carnegie Hall, before a 1992 schedule takes her back to reconquer operatic bastions in Venice, London, and Milan.

Anderson has no illusions about the business she's in, and plays it cannily— impatient with compromise, scornful of incompetence. Nor is she afraid to call the shots: ''The theaters know that I need certain conditions under which I can perform," she says. ''They all think I'm difficult, but if they want me to sing, it's their choice." And they do want her to sing, they do.

RUPERT CHRISTIANSEN