Deborah Voigt plays to the balcony

There is no end to the outrage over the Royal Opera in London demeaning Deborah Voigt by deeming her too large to appear in its production of Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” at Covent Garden this summer.

Realizing that the popular American soprano would not look, shall we say, her best in the tight black cocktail dress that had been designed for the production, the company insisted that the dress stay and the singer go. “I have big hips and Covent Garden has a problem with them,” Voigt defiantly told the British press in March. Casting director Peter Katona shot back with the unfortunate comment that some singers use the demands of their job as an excuse for eating too much.

After Katona’s size-ist, ungallant remark, critics and fans leaped to Voigt’s defense. It’s not the size of the singer but the size of the voice that matters, they argued, as opera buffs have for centuries. After all, anyone susceptible to opera knows a great singer makes listeners suspend disbelief. Opera may be theater, but high notes -- loud, lustrous and long-lasting -- are aural Viagra.

Well, here’s the test. The controversy has been neatly timed to the release of Voigt’s first solo CD on EMI, “Obsessions,” which includes highlights from some of her most famous Wagner and Strauss roles. There is even a five-minute tease from “Ariadne.” Her hips should have no effect on what you hear.

But this collection of arias and scenes, however impressively sung, is unconvincing precisely because it is divorced from any dramatic context. Instead, the principal impression the recording makes is of one brazenly sung number after another.

Voigt has pipes. It is not unthrilling to hear her open up at the end of Salome’s final scene. A couple of short excerpts from Strauss’ “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” are overpowering. A robust Ariadne, she pours out sound and pours on emotions, both overly thick.

And she just keeps pouring. She’s an equally robust Isolde, Salome, Empress. The high notes are reliably high and reliably loud. “Let Me Overwhelm You” might be her theme song. But it’s all the same.

Richard Armstrong’s conducting is also all the same. His concern is moving his soprano along toward the big moments that come predictably one after the other after the other. The CD contains a pile of them. We need only contrast the result with a disc of duets from Wagner’s “Siegfried” and “Tristan and Isolde” that Voigt made a few years ago with Placido Domingo. There the conductor was Antonio Pappano, who helped both singers perform their roles with tremendous vitality and character.

Forget Voigt’s size. Her exhibitionist new CD might be enough to give a director who is looking for interpretive depth pause. This does not mean that Voigt cannot be a tremendous Ariadne. She can be. And ironically, she can be far more expressive in person than on record. But the conditions need to be right.

Five years ago, for instance, she was a spiritless Elsa in Wagner’s “Lohengrin,” her size making her appear ungainly as she diligently attempted the glacial movements of a Robert Wilson production. But a year later, she sang some Verdi arias with the Pacific Symphony with wonderful dramatic immediacy.

Given that singers of Voigt’s caliber ordinarily book their opera appearances four years in advance, it was about the same time as those Verdi performances that Voigt was contracted for her London Ariadne, long before anyone knew what the production would be like. Directed by Christof Loy, it opened the 2002 season, and it was special. It was the first under Pappano in his new capacity as music director of the Royal Opera, and the company went all out. Elegant, sexy, theatrically vivid, the show got rave reviews. The Ariadne, sung by Petra Lang, was refined and exquisite, and her dress was revealing. Whether portraying the regal diva in the opera’s prologue or the mythical Greek figure in the opera proper, Lang was meant to be an alluring Ariadne, however much a wantonly sexual commedia dell’arte intruder, Zerbinetta, tried to steal her seductive thunder.

Once the Loy production was mounted, the Royal Opera recognized the obvious: Voigt was not appropriate for it theatrically or, for that matter, vocally (Lang, a mezzo-soprano singing her first soprano role onstage, was understated). As is not uncommon when such things occur, the company quietly bought out Voigt’s contract. Anne Schwanewilms, a riveting Elettra in “Idomeneo” at Glyndebourne last summer, was hired as her replacement. But two years after she was dropped, and suspiciously close to the release date of her new CD, Voigt flagrantly decided to make a public issue of her weight.

Can she be that desperate for publicity? Is she having vocal difficulties and looking for sympathy? Did she have a falling-out with Pappano? Or has she simply lost her senses? At recent recitals in New York and San Francisco, she was reportedly shameless in her flamboyant playing to the audience.

Voigt is an important singer. She is said to be well liked in the profession and has a reputation for being a down-to-earth diva. I have heard her approach greatness, though it has been when she toned it down in Verdi rather than when she went for the kill in Wagner and Strauss. The last time I saw her, in “Les Troyens” at the Met, she took an uncharacteristically long time to warm up and tastelessly overacted.

Something is clearly awry, especially now that Voigt has begun showing an interest in servicing those fans who receive sublime gratification from vocal domination. They’ll pay her whatever she asks for the privilege and worship at her feet. But if that is the campy route she chooses, she shouldn’t be surprised when others stop taking her seriously.

It’s not the size of Voigt’s waist I’m worried about but the size of her newly exposed ego.

Mark Swed is The Times’ music critic.