By JEANNETTE FANG

The cat is unbelievable. It's elfin, fine-lined, and poignantly beautiful. Almost, dare I say it ... Audrey Hepburn-esque.

Some people are suckers for brunettes. I'm a sucker for Abyssinians. Her name is Delilah, and she sternly inspects my notebook, a diminutive investigator protecting her owner. She then smushes herself into Raquela Sheeran's neck, probing the recent winner of the upcoming Alice Tully Vocal Arts Debut Recital for her rightful hugs and love.

Who would have thought that the only diva in a soprano's apartment would be the one who couldn't speak?

I've intruded, cruelly, on Raquela's single day of rest. Five days a week, she leaves her Inwood apartment at the crack of dawn to work as a lifeguard. As strange as this job may seem, it's one that's very fitting for the singer, for watching over screaming children satisfies her maternal cravings. She's someone who "loves people" and fully embraces every relationship she's had.

Soprano Raquela Sheeran makes her Alice Tully Hall debut on November 30. (Photo by Peter Schaaf)

"I've always wanted to belong, never wanted to become a star," Raquela says. Her compulsion for singing began in Philadelphia, when she heard her high-school chorus. Holding her flute while she played first chair at the George Washington Concert Band, she remembers "everything stopping around me, this funnel of focus." She resolved to "become part of that. That sound." It took her a year however, to build up the courage to approach the choir director with "I can't sing, but I really want to be in your choir."

She recalls him "sitting back in his chair" and exclaiming "are you crazy?!" about her low self-esteem. In fact, Raquela had received quite a few "are you crazy"s before she realized that "music was something I must do." People recognized her enormous musicality and talent and, despite never having had any formal training, Raquela headed to Temple University for her Bachelor of Music degree, the Manhattan School of Music for her master's, and finally, the Juilliard Opera Center for her post-graduate training.

Years of experience created the fully sculpted musician who spent the past five years in Berlin working as part of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Her proactive personality shows through in her touring activity as a Piatigorsky Foundation Artist, which, she says, allowed her to "open up what would have been unknown" to rural areas of North America. She is constantly thinking about "what I can contribute to society," because there is "always something that can be affected in people" when they listen to music. "You want to provoke, entertain, get their attention, get them to reconsider things." Her desire to communicate is shown by her passionate belief that languages "hold the key to the door of another world." Before she discovered voice, she'd entertained notions of becoming an ambassador or an environmental lawyer, a testament to her aspiration to become the voice for those who are not able to communicate.

Raquela would be the perfect role model for a lost young musician. As the child of a broken family, she says, "I was forced to emotionally help myself through chaos." She drops all sorts of pithy remarks, quoting Rilke for his love of the questions over the answers. She is full of practical advice, and says that if one is planning for longevity in the music field, one has to "do a lot of walking on eggshells" in learning how "to become one's own agent." Whenever she feels herself getting frustrated with the pace of her musical progress, she tells herself to "shut up and look at the news." She says she is baffled by people who "walk around, miserable, with blinders, and with mirrors inside these blinders."

"Why waste time being unhappy?" she asks. Worries over the future are silly to her, because if one has something one is passionate about, there's no question that that something is what one should and must do.

Raquela Sheeran, soprano David Shimoni, piano Alice Tully Hall Thursday, Nov. 30, 8 p.m. Tickets: $20 & $15 Available beginning 11/2 at the Alice Tully Hall Box Office. Half-price tickets available for students and seniors; TDF accepted. CenterCharge: (212) 721-6500 Please see the Calendar of Events for more information.

And she certainly is passionate. She even programs passionately.

"I love it. I always imagine an editor with mountains of papers, and somehow I have to make my program stand out from all these piles." For her Alice Tully Hall debut, she created a multiethnic blend that includes Fernando Obradors, Osvaldo Golijov, and Josef Bardanashvili, as well as Strauss's Mädchenblumen, Korngold's Songs of the Clown, and pieces by Rachmaninoff and George Gershwin. Raquela and her pianist, David Shimoni, wanted to have one piece that had never been heard in the U.S., which they accomplished by including Bardanashvili's Three Scenes for Soprano, Strings, and Flute Solo. Raquela sang in the work's Berlin premiere, when the Mendelssohn Players asked her to perform the piece in order to bring more music by Israeli composers to Europe. It's a daunting recital, but Raquela is a woman who embraces singing in seven different languages. "A program has to challenge me, take me somewhere else I haven't been."

Her collaborative partner, Shimoni (also a Juilliard alumnus), is completing his doctorate at the City University of New York. They'd met in a case of desperation, when Raquela's pianist for her 2001 tour of New Orleans had contracted the chicken pox. She called David a week before she had to leave—and discovered that her last-minute-rush pianist was the ideal match. They became the closest of friends, discovering commonalities from work ethic to their favorite foods.

"What I love about David is that he's always very curious," she says. "There's always something brewing." When they work together, they never let each other off the hook, so that there is always a new perspective to be experimented with, and a new discovery to be made.

Raquela likens working on music to adopting children. She's constantly trying to clarify what she sees in a passage, what she's trying to say, and how she can "own" the music. She believes in never being passive, for "your brain will react to your inner voice. You just have to listen to it."

At the end of our interview, she paused and adjusted her wrap. Everything about her was comfortable—the warm hues of her shepherdess-like shirt, the liquid movements of her arms. It was soothing, and rather inspiring, to see how much love she had for what she was doing.

The cat had spiraled up on the couch to my right, making the wheezy puffs of sleep. But as soon as she sensed our attention, she perked up and cocked her ears, then jumped down to the floor.

"Say goodbye, Delilah! You want to say goodbye to Jeannette?"

The little cat remained nonplussed, blinking as she looked up from the floor.

"You're not going say goodbye?"

I'd like to think that she didn't want to say goodbye because she didn't want to see me go. Like the way a kid carries home the wink of a screen star, I chose to think of my time with the two as something kindred and warm.

Jeannette Fang is a fourth-year piano student.