Music : Haken Hagegard at Ambassador

Opera singers as recitalists sometimes disappoint through a lack of subtlety or a failure of finesse. Hakan Hagegard, who returned to Ambassador Auditorium over the weekend to open the hall’s 1990-91 season--its 17th--disappoints through other means.

This time, the celebrated Swedish baritone charmed his way through a program that zigzagged around the centuries, specialized in lightness of sound and feeling and sent at least one listener home musically undernourished.

There was substance in this agenda: appealing arias by Rossini, Tchaikovsky and Mozart; Mahler’s “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen”; dramatic and touching songs by Sibelius and Stenhammar--even three serious encores after the program proper.

But a prevailing blandness and low-energy delivery--with a couple of strong exceptions--made the event seem monochromatic.

That judgment stems clearly from the singer’s basic sound, which remained through this evening a one-color resource. Usually smooth and ungrainy, Hagegard’s is a healthy, if slender, voice, which tends to weakness in the lower register and never grows large, even at loud levels.

More disappointing is the energy and intensity with which it is used. Most of the time, one suspects that the singer is making finely gauged and intimate vocal sounds; the reality is that his lack of involvement through much of his program is responsible for this impression.

What he sang best on this occasion--handsomely and comprehensively supported by the solid and colorful, if sometimes overmodest, pianism of Warren Jones--were the characterful Finnish and Swedish art songs, and his fully engaged singing of three arias, ending with the “Largo al Factotum” from “Il Barbiere di Siviglia.” The rest was mostly forgettable.