American Dream.

Byline: FRED CRAFTS The Register-Guard

WHILE SELECTING an aria to sing in the Miss America competition, Portland soprano Katie Marie Harman turned to her father for advice. Since he did not care for opera whatsoever, she reasoned that if she could find an aria he liked, then probably everyone else would, too.

"I called it the Dad Test," she recalls with a laugh.

The aria she picked was "O Mio Babbino Caro (Oh My Beloved Daddy)," the show-stopping aria in Giacomo Puccini's one-act "Gianni Schicchi" in which a daughter pleads with her father to let her marry a man he dislikes.

`He said, `I like that one because I understand it. As a father, I've been there. I have three daughters. They've done this to me. This is something I feel everyone could relate to,' ' she says.

Obviously, Harman's father knew best, for with the aria she won the Miss America 2002 competition, and since then has sung with the Boston Pops, U.S. Army Band, Shreveport Symphony and Oregon Symphony, among many others.

Just ahead, Harmon - she concluded her one-year reign as Miss America on Sept. 21 - will sing it during the program leading into the Eugene Opera's production of Ruggiero Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" on Friday and Nov. 3.

"The context of it transcends all genres. It transcends all time. People understand this song and they understand the melody in a deep-seated way," Harman says by phone from a speaking engagement in Pittsburgh, Pa. "I love this song."

And Eugene Opera artistic director and conductor Robert Ashens says she "sings it very well."

Truth to tell, Ashens was skeptical at first about having a Miss America in his production. But when he heard Harman sing, he "realized how serious she was and very skilled at her age. She sings with a very beautiful lyrical line, and that's kind of rare these days.

`If I were to produce `Gianni Schicchi' in the next year or two, I could hire her to sing that role.'

The 22-year-old blond soprano's attachment to "O Mio Babbino Caro" - and to opera in general - is no gimmick or publicity stunt. She has been deeply immersed in classical music since she was a child, even though she says her parents (Glen and Darla Harman of Portland) are not classical music fans by any means.

`They call me their `alien child,' because nobody else in my family likes opera,' she says, laughing.

To go back to the beginning, Harman's first love was ballet. She took dance lessons from age 6 through her freshman year at Centennial High School. She credits the sumptuous ballet scores by P.I. Tchaikovsky for giving her "a passion for classical music." She spent hours listening to recordings over and over.

From the outset, the Portland-born Harman sang, too. But while in her fifth-grade musical "Reading, Writing and Rocking," she bottomed out on her solo, "The Forgetful Blues," when, overcome by stage fright at the dress rehearsal, she opened her mouth but nothing came out.

`I ran off the stage. My teacher caught me backstage and said, `For the parents' performance tonight, you will get up on that stage, and you will sing, and you will thank me for this later on in life.' She pushed me out on stage for the parents' performance. I sang. I loved it,' she says.

Harman improved steadily by taking private voice lessons and having a variety of singing experiences. Her high school roles included being a Daughter in "Pirates of Penzance," Martha in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" and Dolly Levi in "Hello Dolly."

During her first year in college at the University of Puget Sound, she was a Wailing Woman in Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Riders to the Sea." The next year, she moved to Portland State University, where she was a Spirit in Wolfgang Mozart's "The Magic Flute."

Then came the Miss America competition.

"I never saw myself as being able to be Miss America," Harman admits. "I'm 5-foot-3. All the Miss America's I'd seen in the past were tall. None of them were really blond. We've had mostly brunette Miss Americas."

But there was more.

"I saw Miss America as being a queen," she says. "I think many young women think this way. She seems so far removed from your own lifestyle, and who you are as a person, when in essence she is the girl next door. She is you. Any young woman in America can be Miss America.

"We are all the same. We are all women with goals and dreams and scholarship needs and motivations regarding an issue. It took me researching the organization to find that - digging past stereotypes."

Music is one of Harman's abiding passions; another is medicine. As Miss America, she championed both.

"I have had an innate sense of health care ever since I was a very young child," she says. "I don't know where it came from, but I do know that it developed even further when I was given the opportunity to be an apprentice to a trauma surgeon at the Oregon Health Sciences University. The summer between my junior and senior year in high school really solidified that desire for me to be a physician and to go into medicine."

Pressed for education funds, Harman began entering beauty pageants. As a freshman, she was crowned Miss Multnomah County and was first runner-up to Miss Oregon. She came back the next year to take a grand sweep - Miss Portland, Miss Oregon and Miss America. "And $75,000 later, my education is completely paid for," she boasts.

The Miss America competition requires its competitors to speak out on an issue they deeply believe in. Harman chose breast cancer awareness.

"I have a family with a history of fibrocystic disease," she says. "That is not breast cancer but it can be a precursor to breast cancer. My grandmother had a scare in 1979 that really educated our family. I was born in 1980, but subsequently the family members in my family had heightened awareness after my grandmother went through this. And my other aunts experienced problems with fibrocystic disease. Several of the women in my life - in terms of friends and close acquaintances - had suffered from breast cancer. I just kept noticing this need."

Harman began volunteering at the Making Memories Breast Cancer Foundation in Portland, which resells donated wedding gowns to finance granting the wishes of terminal breast cancer patients.

"I became involved as a bridal gown model, actually," she said with a laugh. "But I was able to become more involved in the lives of the individuals that received wishes. It was from talking to them, hearing their stories, hearing their passions, hearing their pain and their joy and their hope and their courage, that I got the boldness to use this as a platform issue in the Miss America system."

Everywhere she went during her year's reign - she says she logged about 20,000 miles a month - Harman spoke on "Breast Cancer in America: Caring Community by Community." The experience solidified her goals.

Now that her reign has ended, Harman intends to enroll as a junior at Portland State in January to work toward a dual career in music and medicine.

"As Miss America, I have been involved with the health care field so much more extensively than I have ever been in the past and it has definitely impassioned me and given me more boldness as to what I need to do later on in life as regards to this field," she says.

"Plus, the opportunities to perform, and in a national setting even, have been inspiring. I could have never guessed that I would have been able, at 21 years old, to perform with the Boston Pops on the Fourth of July. That was a dream come true. That was so fantastic. That just gave me the desire and the goals to keep going with singing."

Looking back, Harman has nothing but praise about her experiences as Miss America.

"The program has come such a long way from where it started as a bathing beauty contest in 1921 to now what it is. It is just phenomenal," she says. "Many people do realize the wonderful things that this program does, but there are still those stereotypes."

Miss America is, in her view, "a very normal business job. This job is not removed from life at all. If anything, it is very grounded in reality. It's all about communities. It's all about the people you meet.

"Being Miss America has prepared me for everything else in life that I will face."

Arts reporter Fred Crafts can be reached by phone at 338-2575 and by e-mail at [e-mail].

'PAGLIACCI'

WHAT: Eugene Opera explores the world of a group of traveling actors in Ruggiero Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" (sung in Italian with English supertitles); directed by Ellen Schlaefer, conducted by Robert Ashens

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2:30 p.m. Nov. 3

WHERE: The Hult Center for the Performing Arts, Seventh and Willamette streets

HOW MUCH: $10 to $55, at the Hult Center box office (682-5000)

GUARDLINE: To hear musical examples, call the GuardLine at 485-2000 from a touch-tone phone and request category 3733

FREE PREVIEW: Opera highlights will be given at noon Tuesday at Borders Books & Music

CAPTION(S):

Katie Harman waves to the crowd after being crowned Miss America 2002 in Atlantic City, N.J., last year. Below: Harman performs at the pageant. ABC-TV HAROLD TURNQUIST Harman talks with Robert Ashens, Eugene Opera's artistic director and conductor.