Donnie Ray Albert will sing Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer on Saturday night at Veterans Auditorium accompanied by the Rhode Island Philharmonic.

Rhode Island Philharmonic

When he’s home in Dallas, Donnie Ray Albert likes to sing with his church choir. But when he’s on tour, the award-winning baritone takes center stage, as he will Saturday night, when Albert joins the Rhode Island Philharmonic.

Albert, 58, is just back from almost a month in Louisville where he sang Iago in Verdi’s Otello. After his concert here he will be leaving for Latvia.

This Saturday with the Philharmonic, he will be singing Gustav Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer, an early group of pieces that was born of unrequited love. Mahler fell in love with a singer by the name of Johanna Richter when he was a young conductor. But she showed no interest in him.

This is the second time Albert has sung the score, which he regards as a challenge.

It won’t be hard for his dramatic baritone to carry over the orchestra, he said, but the subtlety of the music is difficult. A lot of it is written in the piano and pianissimo range, which is to say sung softly.

Albert has been singing opera for the past 33 years, ever since his breakthrough role as Porgy in Houston Grand Opera’s Porgy and Bess in the mid-1970s. He toured the show for a couple of years and a cut a Grammy-winning recording in 1977.

The biggest challenge with the role of Porgy, who is disabled, is that it is sung kneeling on a small wagon that allows the singer to move about the stage. Albert said he sang about 400 performances of the show on his knees before quitting.

Now he said if he is asked to do a concert version of Porgy dressed in a tux and standing on stage, he’ll “sing his heart out.” But no way is he getting down on his knees. He’s too old for that, he said, and besides he’s had knee problems. The first time he sang Iago, he sustained a hair-line fracture of one of his knees when thrown across the stage. When he sang the opera in Louisville last month, he told the director that he would be glad to drop to his knees during performance, but wouldn’t risk it during rehearsal.

Albert, who’s from Baton Rouge, La., said he has always sung, in churches and at McKinley High School, where he was an offensive tackle on the football team. He got a singing scholarship to Louisiana State University and did his master’s at Southern Methodist University. He got his first job with Texas Opera Theater right out of school.

Since then he has sung the roles of Nabucco, Rigoletto and Amonasro in Aida, roles that call for a booming voice.

He said he doesn’t sing much contemporary music, but was asked this week to sing a new work by St. Louis composer Harold Blumenfeld that he feels is too high for him.

“But he wants me to do it anyway. We’ll see what we can do with a few adjustments.”

So he should be right at home with the Mahler, which is written for a low voice. The four-movement cycle was completed in 1885 in the original voice-piano version. Mahler later arranged the songs for orchestra.

They are generally somber in mood, except for the second song, “I Went This Morning Over the Field,” which sings of the joy and beauty of nature. But the rest of the songs deal with lost love. The first one, “When My Sweetheart is Married,” discusses the wayfarer’s grief at losing his love to another. The third movement is a display of complete despair, in which the wayfarer likens his agony to having a knife thrust into his heart.

The cycle ends with “The Two Blue Eyes of My Beloved,” which contains the lines, “I went out into the quiet night, well across the dark heath. To me no one bade farewell. Farewell! My companions are love and sorrow.”

Donnie Ray Albert joins the Rhode Island Philharmonic on Saturday night at 8 at Veterans Memorial Auditorium for Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer. Conductor Larry Rachleff will also lead the orchestra in Wagner’s Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 in A Minor (Scottish). Tickets range from $29 to $69, with discounts. Call (401) 248-7000 or (401) 421-2787.

Also, you can hear Albert during an open rehearsal tomorrow at Veterans Auditorium beginning at 5:30 p.m.; conductor Rachleff will begin the rehearsal with the Wagner then turn to the Mahler. Tickets for the rehearsal are $27, $12 for students.

cgray@projo.com