PARIS (AP) -- Natalie Dessay hopes to completely regain her voice following an operation on one of her vocal cords. The renowned French soprano underwent microsurgery on Nov. 17 to remove a polyp from her right vocal cord.

In July 2002, she had microsurgery to remove a nodule from her left vocal cord. "It's been two and a half years now that I haven't completely regained my voice," Dessay said in a phone interview Tuesday. "I kept working, but I said to myself, `I can't keep going like this' because I had completely lost the pleasure of singing."

This year, Dessay canceled her October appearances as Zerbinetta in Richard Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos" at the Bastille Opera House in Paris. Then she canceled two planned December concerts at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, also in Paris.

Dessay knew something was wrong, she said, because she hadn't regained complete comfort when singing. "After the first surgery, that comfort should have come back after four or five months on its own and, in fact, it never really came back," Dessay said.

She said the operation went very well but she's unsure how long her recovery will take. She intends to start retraining her voice in January and hopes to be back on stage by the end of spring. Faced with these medical setbacks, Dessay said she has occasionally considered giving it all up but decided to persevere.

"It's like when an athlete is injured," she said. "He's not going to end his career because he's injured. He's going to wait until he's back in good shape again and then decide if he still wants to do it. And, apparently, I still want to sing.

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