THE VOIGT STUFF : Hail the Conquering Soprano

Until recently, no major opera singer has emerged from Orange County. But then Deborah Voigt, a former Anaheim resident, began winning major prizes.

The gold medal at the 1990 Tchaikovsky International Competition. The $20,000 first prize at the Rosa Ponselle International Vocal Competition in Washington, also in 1990. The prestigious $30,000 Richard Tucker Foundation award last March.

She also was a first-place winner in the annual international Busseto Verdi Competition in Busseto, Italy, in 1989 and one of 40 winners in the Opera Company of Philadelphia-Luciano Pavarotti Voice Competition in Philadelphia in 1988.

With these kinds of accolades, the soprano singer was invited to make her Metropolitan Opera debut as Amelia in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera” in 1991. She returned to the Met last year to sing Chrysothemis in Strauss’ “Elektra.”

Despite all this, Voigt, 32, admits to being “a little nervous” about coming home to sing the heroine in Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” for Opera Pacific starting Sunday.

“People are expecting a lot, and it’s the first time I’ve sung the role,” Voigt said recently in an interview at her hotel. “Of course, I have lots of family and friends here--they’ve all been my greatest supporters over the years. But you know, you want to do well. So there’s some of that anxiety.”

Born in Chicago, Voigt moved to Orange County as a teen-ager with her family, and graduated from Placentia’s El Dorado High School in 1978. She remembers that she has always sung, since she was a child.

But opera singing wasn’t on her mind.

“Some people say, ‘I always wanted to be an opera singer.’ For me, it was sort of something that evolved. I took one step, it led to something else and I took that opportunity as it presented itself.

“Initially, because my family was so involved in the church, I thought I would go into contemporary Christian music. That was kind of where I was heading.”

She entered Chapman University--then Chapman College--as a choral conducting major but dropped out after a year.

“I really was not ready to be in college,” she explained. “So I worked for a couple of years in Irvine as a computer operator and took voice lessons at night.”

A scholarship from the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove paid for some of those lessons, and her teacher encouraged to “really get serious” about her voice. So she entered Cal State Fullerton as a music major and began entering--and winning--competitions, starting with the Metropolitan Opera Western Regional Auditions in Los Angeles in 1984.

“Not everyone is good at competitions,” Voigt said. “I just happen to have the right nervous system for them. And also, I took the rope and decided that was what I was going to do and did it.”

When the San Francisco Opera offered her a scholarship to a 10-week training program there in 1985, for instance, she took it, even though that meant leaving Cal State Fullerton before graduating.

“I thought at that time, well, this is it, on we go, upward and onward, and of course as it turns out that was not the case at all,” she said. “I was real young, like 25 or 26, and that’s young, especially singing the repertoire that I sing, to be launched into major houses with major conductors, where there’s a lot of anticipation and a lot expected.”

Fortunately, the San Francisco program gave her just what she needed: “The most important thing was to age a bit, to have some time in a protected environment, which was the case with San Francisco.”

After she finished the program, she was one of its few graduates asked to remain for another two years as an Adler Fellow, performing and covering roles in the main-stage productions.

But when her husband, John Leitch, was offered a job in Manhattan working for a theatrical agent in 1987, she faced a wrenching change in coasts.

“I had never really wanted to live in Manhattan,” she said. “We moved to New York really for him.

“Now, I think it’s really important for young singers to go to New York and to get that experience and to know what it feels like to be doing auditions two, three or four times a week. . . . I think that if you sit on the West Coast too long, you don’t have the same opportunities.”

She credits her husband for talking her into entering the Moscow Competition, perhaps the most famous competition of them all.

“I didn’t want to go to Russia. But he said, ‘You have to go, because if you go, it’s going to be a wonderful opportunity for you.’ And so I said, ‘I’ll go, but only if you go with me.’ So off we went.”

Since that trip, Voigt and her husband have always traveled together.

“It just really became something that was imperative for the health of our relationship and for me as an individual, too. I sing better because I don’t have that Angst of being separated from someone that I love all the time. . . .

“You know, I’m a person as well as a singer. I think a lot of people forget about that if they don’t stop to think. You have to do what’s best for you inside, too.”

Voigt returned to Cal State Fullerton to sing the role of Donna Anna in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” in 1985, and since then she also has been heard in several local recitals. But when she sings Leonora here, she expects audiences to hear “a very big change” in her voice.

“My voice is much more dramatic,” she said. “The voice has grown in size. And I think it’s evened out.”

She gives thanks for that to her New York teacher, Ruth Falcon, another Busseto Verdi Competition winner, for “kicking (my voice) into another level.”

“We talked a lot more about support and about using my body more. I had a tendency to lock up my body instead of letting the air move through it. So we’ve been spending a lot of time working on that, and I think that really helped open the voice up and probably contributed to some of the growth in size as well.”

The role of Leonora is not an easy one.

“There’s a little bit of everything in it,” Voigt said. “There is a lot of coloratura in the first aria--nice arching phrases and some pianissimo things, some scary pianissimo things. And they’re high. Tenuous moments is probably the best way to put it. But I’m really looking forward to it.”

Voigt prepares for a role by making sure she understands everything that is being said.

“I don’t even like to take something to the piano to even read through until I know exactly what’s being said because it obviously changes all the musical values. Not note values, but the emotion of phrases.”

Unlike some singers, she finds listening to recordings counterproductive to developing her own approach.

“I tend to hear things that I either love, that I don’t do as well, and then I feel I can’t do as well, or I hear things that are not wonderful and it’s frustrating, or I emulate them and I don’t mean to. I just think it’s a dangerous practice.”

One problem that never seems to bother her, however, is stage fright.

“I’m nervous, but it’s good nerves. I’ve never been a person who has nerves that are incapacitating or make me ill or anything like that, thank goodness. I can’t imagine doing it if you did, if your nerves are that bad. I do have a lot of adrenaline. I feel it in my fingertips.”

That energy helps her project her voice into large halls such as the 3,000-seat Orange County Performing Arts Center.

“Actually, I love those big barns,” Voigt said. “I feel most comfortable in those big barns. I’m a large woman and I appreciate the space. I like having a lot of space. I like the feeling that there’s a lot of space out in front of me to sing into.

“In small theaters, I tend to pull into myself a little bit, and that’s not as good for me vocally.”

After Costa Mesa, she goes to Chicago to sing “Ballo” again, then goes back to the Met for performances of “Trovatore” and Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos.” After that, she goes to make her La Scala debut in Webern’s “Oberon,” which she has just recorded with EMI.

“I’ve been very fortunate,” Voigt said. “Everything’s really coming along, and most of the international houses are opening up. At least, there’s some dialogue going on. So I really can’t complain.”