Could there possibly be an all-American Straussian/Wagnerian soprano?
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UCLA Live with
DEBORAH VOIGT!
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DEBORAH VOIGT SINGS:
STRAUSS & WAGNER
Chrysothemis: Ich kann nicht sitzen
(from Strauss' Elektra)
Sieglinde: Du bist der Lenz
(from Wagner's Die Walküre)
Ariadne: Es gibt ein Reich
(from Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos)
Clips are from the
CD "OBSESSIONS"
AMERICAN SONGS
Ives: "At the River"
Bernstein: "Piccola Serenata"
Clips are from the
CD "All My Heart"
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Today she is hailed as the preeminent dramatic soprano of her generation.
Headlines of the current season, such as the following, tell why:
SUPERSTAR SOPRANO WILL SING SIX MAJOR OPERATIC
ROLES THIS SEASON, TWO OF WHICH ARE NEW TO HER REPERTOIRE
CAREER ROLE DEBUTS INCLUDE MADDALENA IN ANDREA CHÉNIER
IN SEASON-OPENING PERFORMANCES AT BARCELONA’S LICEU, AND WAGNER’S
BRÜNNHILDE IN VIENNA STATE OPERA’S NEW SIEGFRIED
VOIGT WILL HEADLINE NEW PRODUCTION OF STRAUSS’S
DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN AT LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO, AND WILL
SING HER FIRST METROPOLITAN OPERA PERFORMANCES AS ISOLDE IN PRODUCTION
OF WAGNER’S TRISTAN UND ISOLDE, TO BE BROADCAST LIVE
IN HIGH DEFINITION IN THEATERS WORLDWIDE
I.e., roles - for the most part the heroines of the German repertoire
- sung only by singers with powerhouse voices, such as Deborah Voigt's,
which she knew early on in her career had the perfect fit for her big,
lustrous voice, and for which she has deservedly garnered the most acclaim.
That her superb vocal instrument resided within a big frame associated
with opera's proverbial "fat lady" did not matter to the opera
lovers and critics who were, and remain, devoted to her and to the widely-
held (though now increasingly questioned) dictum that opera is an art
form driven primarily by voices.
But the above-mentioned season headlines also hint that while remaining fully committed to her Germanic forte, she has of late been expanding her repertoire, adding Maddalena (in Giordano's Andrea Chernier) and Poncielli's La Gioconda to her select list of Italian operatic roles that include Aida, Tosca, Amelia (in Un ballo in maschera) and Leonora (in La forza del destino), the latter three she has also performed recently. Credit the medically risky decision she made in 2004 to undergo gastric bypass surgery, more for reasons of health than of career. The procedure and the ensuing dramatic weight reduction was fodder for the media, to be sure - landing her a spread in People magazine and a spot on CBS' 60 Minutes. She handled the matter with her natural candor and grace.
| Today, nearly four years
later, to say that the risk paid off has become an understatement.
True, the "big girl" that she once was will never be
a wisp of a girl, but her spectacularly transformed outer persona
gave her the courage and confidence to take on the "pretty
woman" roles she would earlier never have dared to play,
lifting her career to superstardom (a lot more people know of
her than ever before). And opening up opportunities galore - suddenly,
in addition to the Italian additions to her repertoire, she could
take to the operatic stage the roles she could only sing in concert
in the not too distant past, such as: Salome - Strauss'
wisp of a 16-year old seductress, which she debuted to a huge
standing ovation at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2006; and the
beauteous Ägyptische Helena (Helen of Troy whose
face launched a thousand ships) in a production mounted for her
at the Met in early 2007; as well as re-explore operas she has
performed before from an entirely new perspective, such as: Tosca,
Un ballo in maschera, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Tristan
und Isolde. |
The reprieve, if you will, from these punishing
roles has also given her time to show off her light-hearted, blond,
blue-eyed, all-American self - singing the songs she grew up singing:
Broadway musicals and pop, with forays into cabaret and the American
song repertoire. According to Opera News, she "comes to pop
singing naturally." And she does it with style, grace and a "devilish
sense of humor."
It may come as a surprise to most of us, but neither Flagstad nor Nilsson
was known to Voigt until she came upon opera for the first time in her
college years at Cal State Fullerton in Southern California where her
family moved from the suburbs of Chicago when she was 14 years old.
When she became convinced that she had the talent and the personality
for an operatic career, she joined San Francisco Opera's well-known
Merola Program for Young Artists - and the rest as they say is history,
although one that is still very much in the making.
Voigt will candidly admit that the idols of her youth were in fact Karen
Carpenter and The Beatles, and that she went through a Julie Andrews/Sound
of Music phase in her young life. Thus when she takes on tour
a program of Broadway, pop and American song as she does when she performs
in recital at UCLA
Live on January 16, 2025 and when she opens Lincoln Center's
"American Songbook" series on January 23, Deborah Voigt,
America's foremost Straussian/Wagnerian soprano, who can swing from
singing a Lied by Strauss in one breath to a tune by Gershwin
in the next, is simply going back to her roots and being her true blue,
all-American self, who on her christening forty-some years ago was so
aptly named DEBBIE JOY!
-JB/© FanFaire 2008
Photo credits: © Joanne Savio - courtesy 21C Media Group;
© Robert Millard - courtesy LA Opera
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