This Texan's accent is decidedly French

Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham is a natural evangelist. Describing Arthur Honegger's "Trois Chansons de la Petite Sirène, " which she sings today as part of an all-French recital at Jordan Hall, she can't help herself. "They are so cool," she says. "You'll love the opening bar."

Graham's spontaneous enthusiasm can hardly be contained. Speaking by phone from Wisconsin, where she sang the same program the previous night, she says, "After every song, I kept wanting to stop and talk about it. 'Now, that song was great because . . .' "

It's that love of communicating with an audience that has made the Grammy-winning mezzo one of the most acclaimed singers in the world today, with a repertoire that ranges from Monteverdi to premieres of modern operas by Jake Heggie , John Harbison, and, last season with New York's Metropolitan Opera, Tobias Picker in "An American Tragedy."

But as today's Celebrity Series program demonstrates, the 6-foot Texan continually returns to the French music she fell in love with as a student in Midland: "It's shown itself to be the cornerstone of my career."

Graham began her musical training as a pianist. "I loved playing Debussy, Ravel -- those impressionistic harmonies," she says, and the addition of words only "upped the ante." Graham's first voice teacher, sensing the connection, gave the 16-year-old mélodies by the Romantic composer Gabriel Fauré, and she never looked back. "I might have been French in a former life," she muses. "Whenever I would dream of elegant and exotic places, there was always an Eiffel Tower involved."

The program she brings to Jordan Hall is a fascinating tour of the French song tradition, spanning nearly two centuries, from Charles Gounod (b. 1818) to the modern master Olivier Messiaen (d. 1992) . Unlike many recitals, in which song sets are unified by composer, Graham and her pianist Malcolm Martineau have juxtaposed varied repertoire by composers who were contemporaries of one another, with particular care given to the dramatic shape of each group. Graham credits Martineau, whom she calls an "encyclopedia," with suggesting many of the pieces: "Malcolm is a master program-builder."

Martineau praises Graham, too, comparing her to the legendary French singer Marie-Cornélie Falcon, whose name is synonymous with the rich yet delicate voice needed for these songs. "In France, in fact, that is what they would call her: a 'Falcon,' " Martineau says, referring to the combination of warm timbre with "a high pianissimo that can project right to the back of the hall."

Conductor Philippe Jordan, with whom Graham sang music of Berg and Chausson on a European tour last year, agrees. With symphonic music, "it's all about working with colors," Jordan says. But Graham brings an entire spectrum with her. "Susan does this quite beautifully, and then it can transmit to the orchestra."

Amazingly, this tour is the first time she's performed all these songs in public, though she's recorded two before. She's smitten with the program, which she says refutes the idea that all French vocal music sounds the same: "This has everything: loud, soft, high, low, fast, slow, romantic, acidic."

Graham keeps a heady schedule of opera appearances, but always makes time for recitals. Unlike opera, with its competing demands of orchestra, costumes, scenery -- "and colleagues," Graham jokes -- recital halls offer a direct connection with the listener. "The great thing about a recital is it's so intimate," she says. "It's like being in your living room."

She brings the same technique and dramatic intensity as she does to opera, but "everything's scaled down to eye contact," she says. "I can be singing, and I'm only six or seven seats away from the person I'm singing to." The current program ends with the lullaby "Brezaiola, " from Joseph Canteloube's famous "Chants d'Auvergne, " and the recital setting has let Graham and Martineau push the envelope. "I've been experimenting with how softly I can sing the last verse -- when the baby is going to sleep."

Graham is squarely in the tradition of the great American divas -- Beverly Sills and Marilyn Horne, for example -- who conquer the world's stages, but never lose their down-to-earth charm or forget their roots. Like many of her fellow Texans, Graham casually but proudly mentions her home state whenever the opportunity presents itself, and her community has returned the favor: This past year, the city of Midland proclaimed Sept. 5 "Susan Graham Day." What's more, this isn't just a one-time honoring of the local-girl-done-good, but an annual holiday kicking off Midland's Septemberfest celebration of arts and culture. ("In perpetuity!" Graham exclaims. "Can you believe it?")

The highlight of last year's event was a screening of her performance in Massenet's "Werther," recently released on DVD. Organizers decided that the best venue to project the opera was in the dome of a planetarium. What better place to let a star shine? Absurd and magical all at once, it was an appropriately operatic tribute. As Graham put it, "We were splashed up into the heavens."