Some singers travel with their pets, a poodle or a dachshund, perhaps. Stephanie Blythe, one of the hottest properties in opera today, is luckier. She gets to travel with her husband, professional wrestler-turned-actor David Smith Larsen.

The couple met when Blythe was singing at the Paris Opera in Verdi's "Falstaff." She had the plum part of Dame Quickly and he a brief appearance as the innkeeper. It was love at first sight, and the couple were married on Dec. 31, 2001.

Now, Blythe says proudly, "David always travels with me, and he appears in every show with me [in a walk-on or non-singing role]. I love this. I'm happy because of being able to sing, and I love sharing this with the man I love. I even love rehearsing -- sometimes more than the actual performance. There have been very few times that I've been unhappy as a singer."

Blythe is learning four new roles this year, and she'll be premiering two of them with Pittsburgh Opera. On Saturday, she performs her first Amneris in Verdi's "Aida," prior to performances in Seattle and eventually the Metropolitan Opera, her professional home base since 1995. She returns in October in another role debut, opening the 2008-09 season as the sultry and sinister heroine of Saint-Saens' "Samson & Dalila."

Regional opera companies provide opportunities for artists to test the waters before plunging in under the spotlights of major houses -- where, often, you don't get a second chance. It's a double win: The performer gets to smooth out rough spots with less scrutiny while the smaller company reaps the benefits of presenting a star in a new role.

Blythe is all the more enthusiastic about her Pittsburgh commitments because she has relatives in nearby Finleyville, McKeesport and New Alexandria. Although born and raised in upstate New York, the singer currently lives in the Poconos. "I always wanted to live in Pennsylvania," she says. "It's a dream come true."

Amneris represents a relatively new phase of Blythe's career. Having made her mark in the lighter mezzo-soprano repertory -- Rossini's comic opera heroines, for example -- she feels that the time has come to make use of her voluminous voice and grand persona in the dramatic Verdi roles. At 38, she has already performed Azucena (in "Il Trovatore") at the Royal Opera in London's Covent Garden; and at the Met this season, she stole the show as the sorceress Ulrica, who has only a single scene in "A Masked Ball." The complex Princess Eboli in "Don Carlo" remains in her future.

Amneris is, however, the biggest and best known among all Verdi's bad-girl mezzos. She's not the title character (written for soprano), but a more three-dimensional figure who grows in humanity and sympathy as the opera progresses. At first cruel to the slave Aida, who is her rival for the love of the warrior Radames, she sends her beloved to his death when he spurns her and lives to regret it.

Blythe -- who, incredibly, has never seen a live performance of "Aida" -- feels that coming to the role without the baggage of her renowned predecessors is a plus.

"I don't have any preconceived notions," she says. "What I do will be my own invention or what somebody tells me to do. I'd rather create my own character than imitate others, as great as they were. I believe that in all aspects of life we need more people who march to the beat of their own drummer."

The hardest part of the role, Blythe says, is stamina: "The major moments are in the last act [a difficult high duet with the tenor followed by the grueling Judgement Scene]. But Verdi gives the singer time to rest, moments where she can calm down. Verdi knew just how much you can tax the voice. He sets lines where the words are important in an understandable [middle] range. He wrote for specific singers and really knew what they could and couldn't do."

Psychologically, as Blythe sees it, "Amneris goes through a full, distinct journey. I love to look at dark characters and try to find their lighter, more sympathetic side," she explains. "The lighter side of Amneris is that she really loves Radames. Her darker side is that she has been brought up as a princess who always got what she wanted. It shocks her to the core to see that this time she is not going to get what she wants. This is an event that will change her life, and Verdi gives Amneris, not Aida, the last word."

Asked about the character of her future Pittsburgh protagonist, Dalila, the singer says she hasn't gotten that far:

"Does Dalila have a nice side? I don't know yet."

It's pretty certain she'll find out, however. Blythe seems to leave no stone unturned. She is generous in her praise of mezzo colleague Denyce Graves, whom she calls "a wonderful Dalila," and who, by coincidence, was in Pittsburgh during the "Aida" rehearsal period, to give a recital at Carnegie Music Hall.

But for Blythe, the whole experience in Pittsburgh is "a homecoming, a return to a place that I loved as a child and can never forget."