Deborah Voigt reigns over London as Ariadne at the Royal Opera House and makes international headlines. [ read more ]

Deborah Voigt returns to London’s Covent Garden to sing the title role in Ariadne auf Naxos beginning Monday, June 16. Watch this exclusive video of Ms. Voigt preparing for her return to one of the opera world’s most important stages.

The six performances with the Royal Opera between June 16 and July 1 are the first she will give with the company since October 2001, when she sang another signature role, the Kaiserin (Empress) in Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten. [ more ]

Deborah Voigt’s Isolde performances in Metropolitan Opera’s star-crossed revival of Wagner’s Tristan hit high note over weekend. The current run of the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde has already been one for the history books. The performances, which feature Deborah Voigt in her Met role debut as Isolde, have been plagued by illness and scenery malfunction, but the production miraculously came together on Saturday when opera lovers heard and saw Ms. Voigt and her latest Tristan, Robert Dean Smith – the third Tristan in four performances, following Ben Heppner’s original withdrawal from the production shortly before opening night – soar to the rarefied heights demanded by this famously taxing masterpiece. [ more ]
Read New York Times article (3.24.08)
Read New York Times review (3.30.08)

Deborah Voigt with Susan Graham at the Opera News Awards, January 2008. [ more photos ]     Photo © Dario Acosta/Opera News

Voigt's Most Taxing Role Yet
Joel Lobenthal, New York Sun, March 10, 2008
On March 10th Deborah Voigt makes “her Metropolitan Opera debut as Wagner’s torturously sublimated and then cataclysmically released romantic heroine [Isolde]. This is only Ms. Voigt’s second time singing the role. ...
    “Ms. Voigt said that it is, perhaps above all, the length of the heroic Wagnerian roles that makes them so daunting, so taxing, so treacherous to try too early in a career. ‘It takes a long time for singers to learn how to pace themselves,’ she said. Yet Wagner supplies dynamic peaks and valleys that make it possible. ‘We have our idea in our heads that it’s a huge orchestra and you have to scream, scream, scream, scream, scream. And that’s really not the case. There are many moments of lyricism.’” [ read full article ]

Deborah Voigt gives her company debut as Wagner’s Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera, March 10. Voigt also returns to Carnegie Hall in March for performances of Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Barber’s Andromache’s Farewell with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. [ more ]

Deborah Voigt was one of the rare musical guests on public radio's Leonard Lopate show this week, talking at the WNYC studios with Lenny about her American Songbook concert at Lincoln Center. She talked in her usual fluent, light and laughing way about wanting to be a Broadway singer before she discovered her opera voice, and discussed the differences between singing Wagner and her beloved American pop standards - the songs she grew up with at the same time she was singing in church and doing school musicals. "This genre is very close to my heart," she said, "It's first nature to me, repertoire I grew up with."
    Here's the link to listen in: www.wnyc.org

As part of a Broadway World interview, James Sims wrote of Deborah's LA concert of American Songbook repertoire: "rarely has the genre sounded so regal as when the magnificent soprano Deborah Voigt lends her glorious vocal styling to the mix, as was the case Wednesday [Jan 16] at UCLA's Royce Hall." Sims continues:

"It is a lovely revelation to discover that Voigt spent her childhood singing classic Broadway show tunes, as it could easily be surmised that the gallant singer was memorizing German operas, for which she is perhaps most celebrated, while still a youngster. That such an accomplished opera star could emerge from growing up on Broadway melodies is a grand seal of approval for the uniquely American musical art form."

Here's the link to the article: www.broadwayworld.com

After these "American Songbook" concerts in Los Angeles and New York City, Deborah Voigt heads to the Metropolitan Opera for both Die Walküre (three performances as Sieglinde beginning January 28) and her first house appearances as Isolde in Tristan und Isolde (March 10 - 28, with the performance on March 22 broadcast in high definition to theaters worldwide!)
    HD broadcast ticket infromation

SUPERSTAR SOPRANO DEBORAH VOIGT OPENS LINCOLN CENTER’S “AMERICAN SONGBOOK” SERIES on Wednesday, January 23. Recital is first in series of notable engagements for Voigt in New York City as she prepares for concerts with San Francisco Symphony and Met Orchestra, both at Carnegie Hall, and two Wagner productions at the Metropolitan Opera, including her first Met Isolde. [ more ]

DEBORAH VOIGT WOWS CHICAGO AUDIENCES AS THE EMPRESS IN RICHARD STRAUSS’S “WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW.” Chicago-born diva’s second Strauss success in two seasons comes as no suprise to local audiences and critics after last year’s “Salome,” but is a joy to witness. [ more ]

Deborah Voigt was recently interviewed by New City Chicago. Here are some excerpts, and a link to the full article: New City Chicago.

Soprano Deborah Voigt finds that less is more at the opera house

As she makes a grand entrance into an eighth floor conference room up in the Lyric Opera office complex, soprano Deborah Voigt is a mere shadow of her former self, literally. Her sparkling and intense crystal blue eyes and her smooth facial features, which have always been radiant, are more pronounced, her blonde hair down and straddling a more defined head. Voigt’s presence is as impressive and imposing as ever, but the sheer size is literally half of what it was: in what may be the most public body transformation of modern times, Voigt lost 135 pounds following gastric bypass surgery.

“It’s been so much fun,” she admits, “I have actually been playing ‘pretty girl’ parts, the ingénue roles that I never even dreamed of playing.” ... “I like the girls that you can really sink your teeth into," says Voigt, "roles that really excite me both for the music and for the drama.” ...

Closest to Voigt’s heart is that her “hometown opera company,” as she calls Lyric, “will forever hold a close place in my heart because they made it possible for me to do a role that I always wanted to do, ‘Salome,’ but which I never dared imagine doing onstage. ... it was Lyric Opera music director Sir Andrew Davis pushing for Voigt to sing the role here after her weight loss that made all the difference. That spectacular production, created for Voigt one year ago, was the hottest ticket in the opera world and Voigt’s performance was unanimously praised by critics and opera lovers alike who flew in from every corner of the planet. It was every bit as high a peak for Voigt as the Covent Garden incident was a valley, and is this year being followed up by another new Richard Strauss production created just for Voigt.

“It actually took me quite a while to come down last year following ‘Salome,’” Voigt admits. “That was quite an experience. I was in the best shape of my life and my singing and my acting had come together in a way that I had never experienced before.”

DEBORAH VOIGT CHARMS AND DELIGHTS HOMETOWN AUDIENCE AT RAVINIA FESTIVAL ON AUGUST 23.

AFTER RAIN-DELAY CAUSED BY HUGE CHICAGO-AREA STORM, VOIGT SINGS RICHARD STRAUSS’S SONG “BAD WEATHER” AND GETS QUITE A LAUGH.

Deborah Voigt’s one-and-only U.S. summer festival appearance this year was almost rained out. But the curtain went up, though a little late, to the delight of her audience at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago – Ms. Voigt’s hometown.

The local Sun-Times reported on several regional consequences of the storm, noting:

“For Deborah Voigt, special effects at her Thursday night Ravinia concert included thunder and lightning. The opera star didn’t disappoint fans at her sold-out show, which went on despite a 15-minute rain delay. … In the first half of her program, she just happened to have programmed a Strauss [song] called ‘Schlechtes Wetter’ (‘Bad Weather’ in English). The first lines of the song: ‘The weather is bad / It is raining and storming.’ It got quite a laugh from the audience. For her encore, Voigt laughed loudly herself when an audience member suggested ‘Stormy Weather.’”

But Andrew Patner duly reviewed Ms. Voigt’s full performance – a recital ranging from a late Mozart cantata and songs by Respighi and Leonard Bernstein – in the same paper (“Voigt Sparkles amid the Sprinkles”), opening with the lines,

“There are certain singers who you just can’t help but love. … American-born and -trained Deborah Voigt is one of them, at the top of her field but shunning diva attitude and trappings.”

Mr. Patner continued:

“The program’s second half ... allowed Voigt just to be herself – an old friend sharing her own joy and pain and not those of operatic characters. Seven songs of Leonard Bernstein … made the storm-reduced audience feel as if we were gathered in Voigt’s parlor.

“And when encores included Irving Berlin’s ‘I Love a Piano’ with Voigt joining Zeger on the Steinway for some well-executed four-hand ragtime and ‘Can’t Help Lovin’ dat Man’ from ‘Showboat,’ we were with a very grand singer indeed, happily far from the world and the stage of grand opera that she normally must call home.”

Voigt concludes her summer season overseas, giving performances of the finale scene from Strauss’s Salome with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas at Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival (August 30) and London’s BBC Proms (September 1).

Deborah Voigt’s 2007-2008 season. [ more ]

Deborah Voigt triumphs in her first staged performances as Salome! [ reviews ]

Deborah Voigt stars on a new DVD in the title role of Ponchielli's opera "La Gioconda" from Barcelona's Liceu Opera House. [ more ]

BIOGRAPHY : ENGAGEMENTS : DISCOGRAPHY : REVIEWS : PHOTO GALLERY
LATEST NEWS : STAY IN TOUCH : PRESS AREA : HOME