When the acclaimed mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne comes on the line from her home on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, it’s only polite to offer belated best wishes for her Jan. 16 birthday, which, after all, is the reason for the call.

Ninety years old — that’s a pretty cool number to reach, you say.

“It definitely is,” Horne replies. “I can’t say that I like it a lot, but I have no choice.”

Mention your own age, 62, and she stops you mid-sentence.

“Oh, please,” she says. “Oh, to be 62 again.”

Horne, one of the true legends in opera over the seven decades since she made her professional debut in composer Bedrich Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride” at the Shrine Auditorium in 1954, has sung on the biggest stages in the world, iconic opera houses familiar even to the casual fan: La Scala, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera among them.

She’s also the rare classical singer who crossed into pop culture with performances on TV shows such as “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” “The Carol Burnett Show,” and a delightful episode of “The Odd Couple” where, after Felix recruits her to sing in his production of “Carmen,” the shy young woman unleashes a big voice and an even bigger crush on her newspaper colleague Oscar.

Horne sang at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993. She’s won five Grammys — from most promising new classical recording artist in 1964 to a lifetime achievement award in 2021. Accolades also include the Kennedy Center Honors and a National Medal of Arts.

Oh, and Opera News once wrote that Horne is “the greatest singer in the world,” so there’s that, too.

But before all the acclaim, Horne was an 11-year-old girl who’d just moved with her family to Long Beach in the mid-1940s. She’d sung all her life to that point as a girl in Bradford, Pennsylvania, where in 2017, the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford opened the Marilyn Horne Museum and Exhibit Center.

But it’s in Southern California that she continued her training, singing in the choirs at Long Beach Polytechnic High School and at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, as well as the prestigious Roger Wagner Chorale and later at the University of Southern California as a music major.

Horne also sang in Hollywood, with her big break coming at 20 when she was picked to be the singing voice of Dorothy Dandridge’s title character in “Carmen Jones,” a re-imagining of Bizet’s “Carmen.”

While at USC, Horne met fellow student Henry Lewis, who at 16 joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic as a bassist and became the first African American instrumentalist to play for a major orchestra. They remained friends through the ‘50s and in 1960 married, a decision that many of Horne’s friends and family opposed.

In her 1983 autobiography, “Marilyn Horne: My Life,” she describes how her mother, who refused to attend her daughter’s wedding, spoke to her about the decision to marry.

“‘What do you have to marry him for?’” Horne recalls her mother telling her. “‘Why can’t you just live with him? Be his mistress, for God’s sake, not his wife!’” Horne, her husband, and her mother reconciled shortly after the wedding.

On the phone, Horne was both fun and feisty, protesting at times that these events were so long ago she couldn’t remember details and occasionally calling out her interviewer when asked a question she felt she’d already answered (and probably had).

“Just ask the questions,” Horne had said after birthday wishes were delivered. And so we did.

Q: You started singing at a very young age. What about it appealed to you?

A: It wasn’t a question of appealing to me. It was a gift. I got it. I opened my mouth and sang.

Q: I read that you sang at a rally for FDR when you were 4. Do you remember that?

A: I think I do. But c’mon, you know?

Q: What kind of opportunities did you have to sing as a child?

A: I did it all the time, especially with my sister (Gloria). We sang every summer every week at the citizens’ band concerts. We were singing all the time.

Q: What kinds of songs?

A: It was kind of a mixed repertory. One that stands out to me is … what’s the day they give out poppies? I think it’s Memorial Day. Anyway, we used to sing ‘My Buddy.’

Q: Were you already interested in opera when you moved here (California)?

A: Well, first of all, I was only 12, and nobody should be interested in opera at 12. It’s too much for your voice.

Q: Do you remember the first time you performed in an opera?

A: Oh, yeah, that was a lot later. I do. 1954. And it was an L.A. group (the Los Angeles Guild Opera) and we performed at the Shrine Auditorium. The opera was ‘The Bartered Bride’ by Smetana. Which is, by the way, a fabulous opera. Nobody hardly does it anymore.

Q: What was it like to be onstage in an opera? In terms of the anticipation beforehand, and the feeling afterward?

A: Oh, do you think I remember? Good lord, it was 1954.

Q: OK, but I’m guessing it was a thrill.

A: I think it’s hard work, dear. And it remains that for your whole life until you stop. It takes a lot of your time, and concentration, tremendous concentration.

Q: Around that time it’s been written that you met Igor Stravinsky and that led to your invitation to go sing in Europe?

A: That’s absolutely false. My invitation to sing with him was in Los Angeles, and it was for — it was called The Monday Evening Concerts.

Q: What kind of performance was it you did with him here?

A: Some songs with Stravinsky. I coached them with Stravinsky and became really, I hate to use the word ‘good friend,’ but became well acquainted with the whole Stravinsky clan. And remained there.

Q: In 1970, you made your debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. I wondered —

A: — why did it take so long?

Q: I guess. Because you did great things throughout the ‘60s, playing at opera houses all around the world, the Royal Opera House and La Scala, for instance.

A: Remember, remember, it is what you were singing. I wasn’t exactly a star then, you know. I was singing small roles or something like that. Not a walk-on, but a small role.

Q: What opera was your debut at the Met?

A: ‘Norma.’ I was performing it with my dear friend, Joan Sutherland, in several places. And she was going to do it at the Met for the first time, and she asked for me, I think. But by then I was getting well enough known that I think they probably wanted to hire me.

Q: At some point, you started to teach much more, especially at the Academy of Music in the West in Santa Barbara, where you studied as a girl.

A: That was much later. I already was not singing very much, performing. (Horne retired from the stage in 1999, though she continued to perform intermittently thereafter.) I was beginning to make the transition.

Q: How does an opera singer know when it is time?

A: You better find and ask somebody who knows. Somebody who knows you, knows your voice. And whom you can believe that person’s information that they’re giving you. That’s somebody who really will level with you and tell you the truth. That’s important.