Deborah Voigt

Deborah Joy Voigt (born August 4, 1960) is an American dramatic soprano who has sung roles in operas by Wagner and Richard Strauss.

Deborah Joy Voigt was born into a religious Southern Baptist family in 1960 and raised in Wheeling, Illinois, just outside Chicago.

At age five, she joined the choir at a Baptist church and began learning the piano.

Her mother sang and played piano at church while her two younger brothers sang in rock music bands.

Those early experiences in church inspired her interest in music.

When she was 14, her family moved to Placentia in Orange County, California.

It was traumatic for Voigt, then in her teens, to adjust to Southern California, "land of endless sunshine and impossibly perfect bodies."

She attended El Dorado High School, where she was a member of El Dorado's Vocal Music and Theater programs, starring in musicals including Fiddler on the Roof, The Music Man and Mame.

At that time, Voigt recalled in an interview, she did not seriously consider becoming an opera singer and was unaware of the existence of the Metropolitan Opera.

Upon graduation in 1978, she won a vocal scholarship funded by the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California so that she could enroll in the voice program at California State University, Fullerton, where she met the voice teacher Jane Paul Hummel, under whom she trained for about eight years.

Voigt was the finalist of the Met National Council Auditions for Young Singers in 1985.

She won awards at many prestigious singing competitions and made her Carnegie Hall debut in 1988.

Named an Adler Fellow, she apprenticed at San Francisco Opera's Merola Program for two years, studying seven major roles.

There, she also took a class from Leontyne Price.

Voigt slowly established her career, entering the professional opera world after winning several first prizes at competitions.

Her breakthrough role was Ariadne in Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at Boston Lyric Opera in January 1991.

The performance was praised by noted arts critic John Rockwell in The New York Times, who called Voigt "one truly remarkable singer" and predicted that she would soon become an important Wagnerian soprano comparable to American soprano Eileen Farrell.

Ariadne first brought her to public notice and international success and remains one of her greatest achievements.

Later she often refers to her operatic career jokingly as Ariadne Inc.

When Voigt made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera on October 17, 1991, in the lead role of Amelia in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, critic Allan Kozinn wrote that she had come with a big reputation.

He noted that "Voigt's deep, mezzolike darkness brought impressive range of color to Amelia's music".

He also commented on how well she conveyed Amelia's feeling of urgency and despair in the second act soliloquy, sung with a warm and golden tone.

Kozinn criticized her acting for not matching her singing, but emphasized that she lost no clarity or smoothness in her big voice.

In March 1992, Voigt returned to the Met to sing as Chrysothemis in Strauss's Elektra.

In the same month, she won the coveted Richard Tucker Award from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation.

The prize was to participate in the annual gala of the foundation held on November 22, 1992, at Avery Fisher Hall.

Critic Bernard Holland noted that her "Ozean, du Ungeheuer", a long sequence from Weber's Oberon, brightened the mood and elevated the gala.

He complimented her performance as "the Tucker gala's most satisfying".

Two months later Holland, reviewing her substitution for Aprile Millo at the Met, said that her attractive singing in the opening sequence as Leonora in Verdi's Il trovatore "reached out and settled comfortably in every corner of this big hall", but said she did not fully immerse herself in the passion of the heroine.

In May 2003, Voigt sang and recorded (for DG) the role of Isolde at the Vienna State Opera.

Since then she has regularly appeared at the Met and other major opera houses, such as the San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Opéra Bastille.

In 2004, Voigt was removed from the role of Ariadne at the Royal Opera House when she could not fit into one of the costumes, a "little black dress."

The casting director, Peter Mario Katona, wanted her to wear it instead of the typical period costume used in such operas, letting out the dress with tailoring, or replacing it with another costume.

She was replaced by Anne Schwanewilms, a German singer of slimmer appearance.

She was "very angry" about the incident, but kept silent about it for several months.

When the decision became public, the Royal Opera House received substantial criticism.

It was pointed out that many notable sopranos, such as the Italian Luisa Tetrazzini, American Jessye Norman and English Jane Eaglen, had been "large-boned, zaftig, even enormous", and Voigt had merely "followed in their heavy footsteps."

The decision was also criticized because of the popular stereotype that female opera singers have to be heavy in order to sing well.

There is the old expression that "in opera, great voices often come in large packages" and the well-worn saying "It ain't over till the fat lady sings".

Voigt was headlined in the British tabloid press as "The show ain't over till the fat lady slims."