Deborah Voigt

American operatic soprano

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 Those early experiences in church inspired her interest in music. 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.

Voigt slowly established her career, 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. 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. 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." Voigt was headlined in the British tabloid press as "The show ain't over till the fat lady slims." There was also an outcry because, it seemed at the time that high culture performing arts, such as opera, should not emulate low culture Hollywood images of thin female stars. She performed a similar concert from "the American songbook" in January 2008 at Lincoln Center. This included tributes to Broadway sopranos Barbara Cook and Julie Andrews. She returned at the next performance of Tristan und Isolde and finished the run to acclaim by most reviewers, including The New York Times, though some critics, including The New York Sun, panned her performance. On September 28, 2008, Voigt joined American soprano Patricia Racette and American mezzo soprano Susan Graham in singing a comedic tribute to Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo. The three

In May 2009, Voigt began mentoring a younger soprano, Christina Borgioli, in a new program that she has set up. Borgioli has "been selected as the first participant in the Deborah Voigt/Vero Beach Opera Foundation's Protegee Mentoring Program." This will involve both voice and acting training, and a shadowing experience. Voigt sang Strauss at the Aspen Music Festival's 60th anniversary concert on August 6, 2009, with David Zinman conducting. Her next formal opera engagement was in the title role of Tosca in September and October 2009at the Lyric Opera in Chicago. Christina Borgioli, her mentee, accompanied Voigt in this production. The New York Times wrote that she "brought steely power and lyrical elegance to her first Met Senta".

In May 2009, Voigt starred in the rarely heard 1776 opera Alceste by Christoph Willibald Gluck, in concert at Lincoln Center's Rose Theatre. She performed with the Collegiate Chorale and American tenor Vinson Cole, as King Admète, and the New York City Opera Orchestra." Time Out wrote that Voigt "already proved her affinity for similar material a few years back when she sang Cassandre in Berlioz's Les Troyens at the Met." The France Amérique noted that Voigt and the chorus received French diction training for the performance from Thomas Grubb, a teacher at the Juilliard School. Unfortunately, Voigt caught the flu when she was to perform, yet went on with the show; the photograph caption for the New York Times review was, "Deborah Voigt, even with the flu, led a Collegiate Chorale concert performance on Tuesday." The reviewer wrote, "she did some impressive work, singing with power, gleaming sound and sensitive phrasing, though she clearly struggled. Often her voice sounded congested and her top range tight her voice nearly gave out, and she had to drop down an octave to get through a phrase." In the summer of 2011, she sang the lead of Annie Oakley in the Irving Berlin musical Annie Get Your Gun at the Glimmerglass Festival. For that festival, Terrence McNally, Francesca Zambello, and Voigt collaborated to produce the stage show Voigt Lessons. Voigt revived the show in 2015 at the Art House in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

In September 2013, Voigt dropped out of a production of Tristan und Isolde and removed Isolde from her repertoire due to having found "the long, punishing role beyond her current vocal capacities". Her stage performances have dwindled since. Voigt's last performance at the Metropolitan Opera was as Marie in Alban Berg's Wozzeck on March 22, 2014

In 2015, HarperCollins published her autobiography, Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down to Earth Diva co written with former People Magazine writer, Natasha Stoynoff.

as of 2009, Voigt had been living in New York for about five years. She said she relied on him As she was getting more famous, she traveled around the world with him, but her crowded schedule and the accompanying stress eventually led to their divorce.