Deborah Voigt’s fabulous ‘Frau’ at Chicago Lyric
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
Deborah Voigt has been singing the daunting role of the Empress (“Kaiserin”) in Richard Strauss’s fairytale opera Die Frau ohne Schatten for years, in five different productions. She recorded it to great acclaim and has just won rave reviews for her latest performances in a new production staged for her by Lyric Opera of Chicago – her first outing in the opera in four years.
Speaking with Marc Geelhoed of Time Out Chicago during the rehearsal period, Ms. Voigt said: “Every time I come to [this role] if feels sweeter!” And certainly, after the overwhelming response to her first staged performance as Strauss’s Salome last season at Lyric Opera, the pressure was on. Perhaps not surprisingly, the critics were every bit as enthusiastic about her first home-town Empress as they were about her first home-town Salome a year ago.
The Chicago Tribune’s John von Rhein wrote:
“Deborah Voigt [is] following her triumphant Salome last season with another triumph as the Empress, the eponymous woman without a shadow. ... [Christine] Brewer and Voigt are two of today’s greatest dramatic sopranos and their voices complement each other beautifully, filling the house with plush Straussian sound. Both sang like forces of nature – Voigt with her gleaming, womanly timbre, deeply affecting in her final monologue; Brewer soaring into the vocal stratosphere.”
And Andrew Patner, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, said:
“Deborah Voigt of course owns the part of an Empress caught between supernatural and human worlds and torn as well by questions of fertility, marriage and the expression of the self. Never one to disappoint, Voigt adds a real acting presence to her arsenal and builds from strength to strength over her character’s three-act transformation.”
The season began well for Ms. Voigt, who sang her first Maddalena in Giordano’s Andrea Chénier at Barcelona’s lovely Liceu Theater. Critics praised her “deeply involved performance” and her “perfect high notes” in the great third-act aria “La mamma morta”. The Liceu was the stage of her enthusiastically received role-debut as “Gioconda” two seasons ago in a performance that is now available on DVD.
Ms. Voigt, who continues in Chicago’s Frau ohne Schatten through December 20, will start the new year in Florida with a “Debbie and Ben Show”: a duo-concert with tenor Ben Heppner, with whom she’ll sing her first performances at the Metropolitan Opera of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde beginning on March 10. On Wednesday, January 23 Voigt will open Lincoln Center’s celebrated “American Songbook” series with performances of Broadway songs and standards at 7:30 and 9:30 PM in the Allen Room at the Time Warner Center. Also in January, she sings with the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas in a program that includes not only Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs but also Samuel Barber’s Andromache’s Farewell” – a program they will repeat at New York’s Carnegie Hall on March 12.
For more on Deborah Voigt’s engagements, go to the Engagements page.
November 28th, 2007
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