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PERFORMANCE REVIEWS:
Elektra, Metropolitan Opera, December 2009 Bullock survives, Voigt soars, in Met’s ‘Elektra’: “Voigt ... made every phrase count. In the soaring melody with which Chrysothemis sings of her longing for motherhood, she filled the hall with thrilling sound.” Vulnerable to Wily to Deranged, With a Voice for Each: “The gleaming soprano of Deborah Voigt, who reprised the role she sang in the production's premiere in 1992, had no trouble cutting through the opulent orchestral textures.” “Voigt ... has reinvented her soprano as an efficient, even instrument with a glint of steel.” Lyric Opera opens season with glowing "Tosca" “... Voigt brought both passion and restraint to her Floria Tosca, underlining her character’s flirtatiousness and jealousy in her scenes with Galouzine, and repulsion and horror when confronted by Morris. ...” Read full review. Soprano Voigt shines at Aspen festival “She was in radiant form, delivering a commanding performance that justified the repeated roars of approval she received.” Read full review. Opera arias and scenes concert with the London Symphony Orchestra, June 2009 “She could have danced all night — though perhaps not cheek to cheek with the head of John the Baptist. After Asher Fisch had conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in Richard Strauss’s Dance of the Seven Veils, Deborah Voigt swept on stage, with blood-red frock and blood-red lips, to sing the closing scene from Salome. After that, she offered heartfelt thanks to her boisterously enthusiastic audience in Strauss’s song Zueignung. And then, daringly, the orchestra partnered her in I Could Have Danced all Night — to riotous applause. By the end of the evening you really could believe that Voigt could have spread her wings and done a thousand things that she had never done before. Now she was on top form. A new gilding guarded the top register of her dramatic soprano voice; there was true beauty within the horror; and Voigt embodied every movement, every acrid scent of Strauss’s pungent score.” Tristan und Isolde, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Lyric Opera’s ‘Tristan’ a triumph for the shining Isolde of Deborah Voigt : “[Voigt], today’s Isolde of choice, is one of a highly select band of singers capable of meeting the rigorous vocal demands Richard Wagner made of the protagonists of his seminal masterpiece, ‘Tristan und Isolde.’ Lyric’s ‘Tristan’ soars on Voigt’s golden wings : “There are reasons they call it grand opera. And some of the best were on display Tuesday night when Lyric Opera of Chicago opened its mesmerizing production of Wagner’s ‘Tristan und Isolde.’ Lyric Opera raises curtain on truly memorable ‘Tristan und Isolde’ : “Voigt and [tenor Clifton] Forbis are a perfect match. Their love duet in the second act (it lasts 40 minutes!) is one of many emotional high points in this production. Later, the mortally wounded Forbis is wonderfully dramatic in his great scene that opens the final act, and Voigt climaxes the evening with an achingly beautiful performance of the familiar Liebestod (love-death), arguably the most beautiful 10 minutes of music Wagner ever wrote.” Schubert Club recital, January 2009 “Soprano Deborah Voigt’s Tuesday-evening Schubert Club recital, a master class on communicating with an audience, explored several seldom-visited pockets of the art-song repertory. ... what made the concert memorable was her generous sampling of songs in English, by Americans from Amy Beach (1867-1944) to Ben Moore (born 1960). The Chicago native, a fixture at the world's great opera houses, may earn her living by singing in other tongues, but she's most expressive and affecting in her own.” As Ariadne in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, June 2008 “Voigt has a gleaming tone with a touch of steel, ideal for Straussian roles such as Ariadne. Her diction is crystal-clear and her animated line projects the words with genuine feeling for their significance. There’s a nice irony in that the work is in part about the pressures to which great art is subjected.” “Ms. Voigt looked elegant and sounded in fine form in her first Covent Garden appearance since 2001 ... she sounded lustrous as she pleaded for death, her huge, gleaming voice as commanding as ever in her signature role. ... There was plenty of chemistry between [Robert Dean Smith as Bacchus] and Ms. Voigt during the opera’s conclusion under a star-studded sky.” “Once she gets bewitched, bothered and bewildered, in the sumptuous 15-minute duet where Bacchus (robust Robert Dean Smith) turns the whining, pining Ariadne into an ecstatic lover, she is magnificent. And the new compact curves look good too.” “In the vehement, all-stops-out final duet with Robert D Smith’s sterling Bacchus ... she finally [struck] gold and [showed] the Covent Garden audience why she is rated elsewhere as one of the world’s leading Strauss sopranos.” “As the backstage drama queen transformed first into a grieving woman and then into an ecstatic goddess, [Voigt] is really rather wonderful. Whether hurling imprecations at Kristine Jepson’s Composer or abandoning herself to the blandishments of Robert Dean Smith’s Bacchus, she acts with refinement, glamour and passion. ... she seems to have found greater expressive freedom, etching words with tremendous vividness and generating an emotional charge that hits you in the solar plexus.” “Voigt Soars – Deborah Voigt’s blazing performance at London’s Royal Opera House makes you forget that a scandal once was attached to her. ... She looks stunning. As a woman deserted by her lover who longs for death, her acting is both passionate and dignified. More importantly, her voice is gorgeously glossy, and it opens out in huge thrilling waves of sound the higher she sings. In short, she’s a sensation.” “Deborah Voigt, now fitting in that little black dress, can rattle the rafters with her money notes.” Tristan und Isolde, Metropolitan Opera, March 2008 A ‘Tristan und Isolde’ Well Worth the Wait Met Orchestra Concert, Carnegie Hall, February 17, 2008 “Deborah Voigt did glorious battle with the final scene of Richard Strauss's Salome. ... this is a soprano of penetrating power and clarity.” As the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten, Lyric Opera of Chicago, November-December 2007 Lyric’s ‘Frau’ casts a mighty shadow Lyric’s dream team casts a giant ‘Shadow’ Recital at the Ravinia Festival, August 23, 2007 “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 ... 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.” Helena in Die Ägyptische Helena, Metropolitan Opera, March-April, 2007 “Ms. Voigt’s creamy, radiant soprano, fortified with some necessary steel, made for a potent Helena.” “With her pleading sexuality, alluring confidence and yard upon yard of unspooling melody, Helen requires a soprano of majestic talents. Voigt’s got them.” “Voigt filled the house with her lustrous silvery soprano, adding to her string of Strauss successes following the title roles in ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’ and ‘Salome,’ [the Empress] in ‘Die Frau [ohne Schatten]’ and Chrysothemis in ‘Elektra.’” “It was hard to ponder the opera’s shortcomings in the presence of Ms.
Voigt’s splendid portrayal. She sent Strauss’s lines soaring with gleaming tone and unforced power. In one climactic moment, standing atop the prompter’s box, she capped a defiant outburst with a high C that, like some ‘Star Wars’ light saber, threatened to slice the auditorium right down the middle. Yet Strauss’s lyrical effusions must have grace and lightness as well, qualities that as always came naturally to Ms. Voigt.” “[Voigt] looked splendid in the slinky dresses of the world’s most famous femme fatale and soared through the piece’s only well-known music, the ‘second wedding night’.” As Salome, with the National Symphony Orchestra, January 2007 Voigt Delivers in the NSO’s Stellar Salome “Opera stars often hit a peak early on, and spend the rest of their careers trying not to disappoint a world that witnessed it. So when Deborah Voigt delivers one performance after another that her fans didn’t dare anticipate a decade ago, you see why she’s adored unceasingly, and rarely more than at Thursday’s concert performance of Strauss’ Salome with the National Symphony Orchestra. ... Voigt’s Salome is a thought-through characterization worth traveling for. ... “Voigt sizzles in a hot ‘Salome’ “As Salome, the inexhaustible Miss Voigt is onstage and singing throughout most of the evening. Her Salome stealthily evolves, morphing from naive young girl into sexual predator, expanding vocally from lyric tenderness to Wagnerian power and majesty.” As Salome, Lyric Opera of Chicago, October-November 2006 “Voigt’s superb instrument sounded ideal in this Salome, retaining its quicksilver girlishness even when dominating the most grueling orchestral climaxes. Every phrase, from the coyly glittering dispatch of ‘den Kopf des Jochanaan’ to a bile-laden final scene of protean force, was infused with singular meaning and glamour. One veteran Lyric subscriber declared Voigt’s Salome to be the most formidable since that of the legendary Ljuba Welitsch; this was lofty praise indeed, but Voigt’s performance was inarguably a standard-setting one.” “It was a personal and artistic milestone for this beloved Illinois-born soprano, who must have felt as if she were making a second professional debut. It was also a personal and artistic triumph. Ms. Voigt, who looked great, exuded confidence and won a tumultuous ovation. What matters, though, is that she sang thrillingly … I have never heard her sing with such fearless intensity. That she can now move with newfound agility seems to have empowered her singing as well as her acting.” “Her singing was gleaming and voluptuous, its power and warm, womanly vocal quality undiminished. … Voigt poured out the grueling final scene in a mad exultation of opulent, radiant tone.” “In depicting Salome, Voigt relied on well-chosen movements and the power and subtleties of her voice. ... She made the listener understand her character, and that can be a frightening thing. The audience members shot up at the end for an automatic standing ovation, and they clapped and cheered for a straight 12 minutes before the stage lights were turned off. But as they left the opera house, many of them were strangely silent.” “When Voigt first appeared, the signs were promising. Dressed in red wig and flowing gown, she has never looked so lithe and graceful. As the evening progressed, it became obvious that she was in velvety glorious voice, soaring thrillingly at all the key moments, most especially the final ‘the enigma of love is greater than the enigma of death.’ Voigt is smaller, yet the voice remains big. …Voigt emerged victorious as the curtain dropped to tumultuous applause. Standing ovations, I hear, are rare at the Lyric Opera.” “Voigt sings the hell out of this role … She is perhaps alone in being able to put the music first and to sing this fiendishly difficult and frequently exposed part with astonishing accuracy, power and beauty. Even if there were no "Dance of the Seven Veils" or a bloody head of a prophet on a silver platter (and there most certainly are in this production), Voigt's Salome alone could tell the entire story.” “Lyric Opera of Chicago is presenting its first ‘Salome’ in a decade, with the big news, of course, American soprano Deborah Voigt singing the title role for the first time in a staged production. Voigt, in a word, is fantastic in one of the prized roles of the dramatic soprano repertory. Already one of the world's renowned Isoldes, she has the vocal resources to scale the most demanding heights created by Strauss, in particular the final monologue as she caresses the severed head of Jochanaan, her prize for performing the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ for her lecherous father.” Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera at San Francisco Opera, September 2006 "The focus of the evening, in the end, was Voigt, who sang Amelia in a breakout performance here in 1990's. ... The outcome was a splendidly etched portrait of a woman torn between love and duty, and Voigt made the dilemma clear in soaring, impeccably shaped melodic phrases. ... The Act 3 showpiece, 'Morrò, ma prima in grazia,' was a masterpiece of musical conjuring." Voigt's first Metropolitan Opera Tosca, April 22, 2006 "With her expressive face, she can signal emotions by batting an eyelid. Her anger, rather than building steadily during the evening, exploded in her confrontation with Scarpia at the end of the second act, when she bowled James Morris over a chair as she stabbed the evil police chief. This was no breathy, flighty diva - rather it was a woman intent on getting her way and swiftly eliminating Scarpia as an obstacle." "A major step. ... Ms. Voigt gave an involving, impetuous and vocally burnished portrayal. ... Her bright and penetrating sound recalls Birgit Nilsson's Tosca. ... When she told Cavaradossi that she had no choice but to kill Scarpia, she leapt to a slicing high C that shook the house as she sang of thrusting the knife into his heart, then plunged two octaves to an earthy low C. ... Ms. Voigt invests the character with personal touches, bringing out Tosca's vulnerability, and sings with daring abandon during the intense confrontation with the villainous Scarpia." "Deborah Voigt, gleaming as the 19th-century diva ... was making her Met debut as Tosca - even more surprising, she'd only sung the role once before. You would have imagined that singer and role were always made for one another, as they here proved. ... Voigt exudes a certain old-time operatic glamour beyond her glorious voice. Here she gave Puccini's spirited heroine with the kind of classiness I recall from my very first Tosca, about 60 years ago - Margherita Grandi as she thrillingly stabbed my first Scarpia, the legendary Mariano Stabile. ... an impressive operatic experience. "[Ms. Voigt] brought vocal charisma and shimmering power to her portrayal, which grew stronger as the performance continued. ... The audience that [first] night gave Ms. Voigt an ardent ovation. ... I heard Ms. Voigt sing the role again on May 5, and she was more confident in her portrayal, both vocally and dramatically. ... she lets more of Tosca's insecurity come through...When the conniving Baron Scarpia, the police chief, leads Tosca into thinking that Cavaradossi is deceiving her ... Ms. Voigt's poignant Tosca, though furious, seems utterly humiliated. ... I'd ask this of those who question Ms. Voigt for her daring: Who are the great Toscas of the last 20 years that she is challenging? No one has dominated the role the way Callas and Renata Tebaldi did in the late 1950's and early 60's." First Tosca at the Vienna State Opera, April 1, 2006 Simply indestructible! With all her strength The Met's La forza del destino "Ms. Voigt, the second-cast Leonora in 1996, is now a drawing card in her own right, and she sings the role with a refinement and a nuance that convey Leonora's pain in all its variety - starting with her doubts about leaving her father to run off with Alvaro, and then all the agony that flows from that moment. She has the high notes and the grace to make the last act's 'Pace, pace, mio Dio' into a persuasive cry of the heart." "Voigt was in superb lustrous voice, and in that final scene produced legato singing of simple radiance." "Soprano Deborah Voigt, who last portrayed Leonora at the Met a decade ago, attacked Verdi's soaring writing with generous, gleaming tone and much heart ... Voigt's 'Pace, pace' was weary and gentle, a thing of desolate sighs, seconded by Noseda's sensitive conducting." "Voigt's ample voice encompasses Verdi's dramatic soprano roles with ease, and her Leonora had both vocal power and dramatic authority. ... She made a strong impression in the final scene with a fervent 'Pace, pace mio dio.' "Voigt was Leonora, with power and high notes to spare for her final show-stopper, 'Pace, pace, mio Dio.'" AND: Voigt's first Metropolitan Opera Leonora in Verdi's Forza del destino "In the monastery scene ... it was thrilling to hear Ms. Voigt's gleaming soprano soar over the chorus and orchestra. And her voice is steady and true to pitch." An Evening of Cabaret with Deborah Voigt Deborah Voigt's New York Cabaret Debut Hailed by Variety!
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