Wesla Whitfield could have been singing on opera stages, but that's not where her heart was.

Opera's loss turned out to be cabaret's gain, and Whitfield is among the most highly regarded jazz/cabaret singers on the scene today, with a voice that spans a range of styles and emotional highs and lows.

She'll make a stop in Pittsburgh on Friday as part of Cabaret Pittsburgh's Riverview Series.

The California native trained as a classical singer and started her music career with the San Francisco Opera Chorus. But she was drawn to the American songbook and the classic works of songwriters such as Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Rodgers and Hart.

"Opera wasn't about the music, it was about the voice. It was so boring," Whitfield says. "I found myself sneaking out from opera rehearsals to piano bars. I really loved this music."

Whitfield got a job as a singing waitress in the mid-'70s, and began to develop a following. Since then she has been a mainstay on the cabaret circuit, performing regularly in and around her home base in San Francisco. (She's in the middle of an extended run at San Francisco's Empire Plush Room, where she has been a regular performer since the 1980s.) She also makes the rounds of nationally known venues, including the Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room in New York.

For Whitfield, the pop and Broadway classics she interprets for cabaret audiences have a universal appeal: "They're about the human condition. Since the beginning of time, people have fallen in love. Everyone relates to that."

She has also overcome rough spots in her life. At 29, she was caught in the middle of a random street shooting that left her paralyzed from the waist down. But Whitfield moved beyond the circumstances that left her in a wheelchair and returned to the stage.

Whitfield just released a new record, "Message From the Man in the Moon." It's her 19th and features her longtime musical collaborator and husband, pianist/arranger Mike Greensill, whom she has worked with since the 1980s.

"These are songs that we love. It's very intimate. It sounds as if it was done in our living room. That feeling really comes through."

Greensill will play piano at Friday's performance.

As much as she loves a great song, Whitfield doesn't write them. "It's so easy to write a bad song. I don't feel I have that talent."

Offstage, Whitfield teaches classes in the history of American popular music of the '20s, '30s and '40s at a community college near her home. Her students are several generations removed from those hits, but she says the music can still reach them: "If you let the song come through, it's timeless."