MUSIC REVIEW : Jessye Norman: The Art of the Diva : The mannered soprano offers a brief but wildly cheered recital in her Orange County debut at Performing Arts Center.

COSTA MESA — Jessye Norman, who made her belated Orange County debut with a rather brief, wildly cheered recital Friday at the Performing Arts Center, is a diva--the real, rare thing. And she plays the part to the precious hilt.

She sweeps onto the stage in stately splendor, usually wearing a fanciful costume that masquerades as an evening gown. In this case it was a billowing white and blue hand-painted kimono. (Too bad she wouldn’t allow our photographer to take her picture.)

She orchestrates her own ovations, acknowledging the devotion of her audience with regal dignity. In this case it was a non-capacity audience.

In moments of silence--moments that she likes to stretch to an artful eternity--she strikes statuesque poses and defies the adoring masses to breathe. Coughing would be dangerous, chatting sacrilegious.

When lost in the rapture of song, she sculpts pretty phrases in the air with her expressive hands. She also punctuates the passing sentiment knowingly with her even more expressive eyes.

Like it or not, the lady has style.

She also has a voice--a huge, dark, rich, glorious voice that can roar like thunder one moment and whisper like a zephyr the next. It is a voice of many colors, many facets, many inclinations.

Norman often encounters some strain at top range--an area she left largely and wisely unexplored on this occasion. Never mind. Her tone is remarkably lush in the middle and absolutely humongous at the bottom. Who knows, she may just be the mezzo -soprano the world has been longing for.

It would be something of an exaggeration to describe her Costa Mesa recital as a model of interpretive spontaneity. Often as not, she dealt in calculated effects that bordered on exaggeration and flirted with mannerism. Sometimes the flirtation threatened to develop into a passionate affair. At least no one could claim that her performances were bland.

She opened the evening with “The Confession Stone,” an effectively bleak yet essentially mawkish set of biblical contemplations by a composer identified in the program merely as Fleming. Although the sponsoring Philharmonic Society provided a massive biographical sketch of the prima donna, it mustered no annotations and no English texts.

A little homework revealed, however, that the gentleman had a first name: Robert. A Canadian, he died in 1976 at the age of 55. His forte, not surprisingly, turns out to have been movie music.

Five intimate Lieder of Richard Strauss, which followed, suffered from surprisingly mushy diction and from the singer’s tendency to favor sound over substance. A very languid tempo turned the gentle introspection of “Morgen” into impending tragedy. The too full-throated ardor of “Cacilie” invoked discomforting images of a mighty Valkyrie ho-jo-to-ho-ing on the brink of battle. Even here, however, one had to admire Norman’s arching legato and, when she chose to use it, her exquisite pianissimo.

After intermission came Jessye Lite in four introspective, eminently Gallic “Melodies francaises” by--surprise--Tchaikovsky. Ask not when he wrote these lovely, atypical songs, or why.

Here, Norman’s timbre turned slender, her delivery became delicately conversational, her demeanor almost coquettish. It was lovely.

Finally, she turned, grandly, to the sexy insinuation, unabashed vulgarity and blazing temper of Falla’s “Siete canciones populares espanolas.” In “Polo,” her ay s really had it. She growled the ultimate exclamation with the sort of chesty force that is supposed to make strong men weak.

The formal program ended at 9:35, after no more than an hour of singing. With three encores and canny milking of applause, the modest agenda was stretched another 25 minutes.

The first encore involved some arch, wide-eyed mugging (vocal as well as facial) in Copland’s “Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven--Did I Sing Too Loud?” Then, inevitably, came a massive revival-meeting rendition of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” Finally, the diva volunteered her notorious low-camp/high-vamp/slow-motion version of Bizet’s Habanera, proving once again that she must be the most memorable Carmen since Bea Lillie.

Everyone went home delirious. Well, almost everyone.

Dan Saunders provided crisp, attentive, self-effacing accompaniment at the piano.