Soprano Has Big Talent, Little Luck

Deborah Voigt may be the unluckiest singer when it comes to recording her work for posterity.

In 1997, she was to star in a televised production of Verdi’s “The Force of Destiny” with Luciano Pavarotti, the sort of breakthrough role that could transform someone into a top opera star.

Pavarotti didn’t learn his part and the broadcast was canceled.

Later that year, Sir Georg Solti picked her to sing in a new recording of Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde,” another high-profile vehicle that would showcase her as a major prima donna.

Solti died of a heart attack before recording sessions even began.

Last April, the Metropolitan Opera scheduled a broadcast taping of perhaps her finest role, the title character in Strauss’ “Ariadne on Naxos.”

Co-star Natalie Dessay strained a vocal cord and the taping was postponed until 2003.

Fortunately, her Ariadne was preserved in a studio last fall for a recording released this month by Deutsche Grammophon. It co-stars Dessay and Anne Sofie von Otter and was led by conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli, who died of a heart attack on April 20.

“Apparently he did the final editing right before he died and apparently he was real pleased,” Voigt said on a sunny day at her hotel across the street from the Met.

In the last five years, the “Ariadne” recording had been proposed and halted many times, much to the frustration of Voigt and those who thought her portrayal was worth saving for history.

“I don’t know what would have happened if Maestro Sinopoli had not come up and proposed it,” she said.

Though few, her recordings have been outstanding of late. “Wagner: Love Duets,” with Placido Domingo, is a finalist in next month’s Gramophone Awards, among classical music’s highest honors.

And while DG will release her recording of Strauss’ “Armistice Day” later this year, no label has signed her to an exclusive contract to put out those recital CDs that raise awareness among the general public.

She’s even joked she could do a crossover recording and call it: “Voigt Where Prohibited.”

“It just may be one of those things that may not happen in my career,” she said. “You can’t have everything.”

At 40, she has become one of the world’s top Strauss and Wagner singers. And she’s increasing her leap into the Italian repertory, singing Puccini’s “Tosca” in Miami last spring, adding it to the Verdi roles of Aida, Amelia in “A Masked Ball,” Lady Macbeth and Leonora in “Il Trovatore.”

But some opera houses aren’t willing to give her roles beyond the hochdramatische (high dramatic) repertory.

Part of the reason may be that she’s no Barbie doll soprano. Her weight dropped dramatically in 1996-97, and her svelte figure helped her become a more dramatic actress, but she regained the weight after the diet drug fen-phen was withdrawn from the market in September 1997 because of side effects.

She’d like to drop weight again, just to feel healthier and have more energy, but she also knows her career in the Wagner and Strauss repertory won’t be hurt if she doesn’t.

“They’re going to have a tough time finding a Brnnhilde who wears a size 8,” she said.

Brnnhilde, however, is not in her immediate future.

She gave riveting performances of Sieglinde with Domingo at the Met in 1996, 1997 and 2000 and was intrigued by the idea of moving up from Sieglinde to Brnnhilde for the Metropolitan Opera’s revival in 2004, but Met artistic director James Levine said she should pass.

“I respect his opinion,” Voigt said. “He said, ‘Leave it alone. It’s too soon.’ If I start going to that stuff too soon, I’ll lose these parts I love so much.”

Voigt’s live performances are thrilling, with an easy glimmering top and drama that steadily increases. While her German is perfect, her Italian enunciation has at times lacked, but is steadily getting better.

From Placentia to Pavarotti

It’s very different from the singing she did growing up in Wheeling, Ill., where she joined the choir in a Baptist church when she was 5. She didn’t seriously think about opera until years later in California, after her family moved to Placentia. She sang in school choirs, spent two years as a computer operator, then enrolled at Cal State Fullerton, where she met Jane Paul, who became her voice teacher.

Slowly, the career came together. Voigt was a finalist in the 1985 Met National Council Auditions, spent two years as an Adler Fellow at the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program and won the gold medal in voice at the 1990 Tchaikovsky International Competition.

When she made her Met debut a year later as Amelia, Mike Silverman of Associated Press wrote: “It’s too soon for opera fans to dance in the streets, but maybe, just maybe, a star was born Thursday night.”

Six years later at the Met, she had to deal with Pavarotti disappearing in the middle of a duet in “Ballo” to go offstage for water. He didn’t tell her in advance.

Her most colorful Met memory is of the 1998 performances of “Lohengrin,” where minimalist Robert Wilson’s staging was met with loud boos and cheers from competing factions divided over his use of direction from Japanese Kabuki theater.

“I was tossed into these staging rehearsals with this madman,” she said.

“He said you have 60 seconds to walk from one side of the room to the other side of the room and you must start with beat one and end with beat 60,” she said.

Future plans include her first performance of Strauss’ “The Loves of Danae” (next summer’s Salzburg Festival), a new production of Berlioz’s “The Trojans” at the Met with Ben Heppner and conductor James Levine (February 2003) and the Metropolitan Opera’s first performances in 78 years of Strauss’ “The Egyptian Helen” (September 2006).

The most tantalizing opera on her schedule is “Tristan.” She’ll sing Act 2 in concert this February at the New York Philharmonic with Stig Andersen and conductor Kurt Masur, and her first staged performances are scheduled for Vienna in May 2003 with Thomas Moser and conductor Christian Thielemann.

On Levine’s advice, she turned down a chance to sing Isolde in Houston in 1999. Given Voigt’s performances of Elsa in Lohengrin and Sieglinde in “The Valkyrie,” anticipation will be high.

But at the moment, Voigt wasn’t thinking years ahead. She was preparing for an upcoming performances of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” in Madrid with the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin on tour. She had never been in that production, by Stephane Braunschweig, so the company sent her a videotape, one that couldn’t be played on U.S. machines.

“First, I had to have it converted,” she said.

Finally, it was ready to be viewed, but she put it off a night. The next day, she turned it on, and couldn’t believe what she saw.

“It was a soap opera,” he said. “The maid had left the TV on and somehow recorded over it.”