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Deborah Voigt, among the world’s most highly esteemed dramatic sopranos and finest interpreters of the dramatic roles of Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, has also made her mark in popular Italian operatic parts such as Tosca, Aida, Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, and Leonora in La forza del destino. This season, she adds the title role in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda to the long list of roles she has performed at her “home” opera house, the Metropolitan Opera. She is an active recitalist and performer of Broadway standards, has an extensive discography, and has given enthusiastically-received masterclasses. Ms. Voigt’s first Met performance of La Gioconda is her season-opener, and she follows it with her first Salome at the Vienna State Opera, where she has appeared nearly every season since making international headlines there in 2003 with her first Isolde. She performs in Tristan und Isolde for the first time in her home town of Chicago with Lyric Opera of Chicago under Sir Andrew Davis. In March she performs Salome with Opera Pacific, and in April she presents her Amelia in Verdi’s Ballo in Maschera to the Opéra National de Paris. She closes out her season in July, 2009, with her signature Tosca at London’s Royal Opera House. After their huge success together at the Hollywood Bowl two seasons ago, Deborah Voigt and Barbara Cook give a joint concert at southern California’s Orange County Performing Arts Center, and Carnegie Hall welcomes Ms. Voigt for her first holiday-season concert there. Her calendar includes New Year’s Eve in Beijing and programs of music by Wagner and Strauss in London, Paris, and Berlin. Deborah Voigt devoted last season principally to opera, highlighted by her role debut as Maddalena in Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier in Barcelona and a return to Lyric Opera of Chicago for a new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten. Most impressively, she also added Isolde to her Met Opera repertoire, performing with four different Tristans in a run of five performances, one of which was transmitted live in HD to cinemas worldwide. The New York Times reported that she “set the tone for the performance with her clear, incisive, and intelligent singing.” She also hosted another of the hugely popular international transmissions of “The Met: Live in HD”. She made two highly-acclaimed returns, to Lincoln Center’s “American Songbook” series, for a well-received concert, and to the Royal Opera House, for Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in June. Ms. Voigt’s wide-ranging repertoire includes starring roles in Strauss’s Egyptian Helen, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, and Friedenstag; Wagner’s Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, and Fliegende Holländer; and Berlioz’s Troyens, among others – several of which she has recorded. In 2005, the popular soprano released her second solo CD for EMI Classics, All My Heart, with pianist Brian Zeger. A critic for the Washington Post praised the “discerning eye” behind the adventurous choice of repertoire, “performed by a voice outstanding not only for tone and power but for interpretive subtlety and emotional nuance.” Ms. Voigt’s first EMI Classics solo CD, Obsessions, presents scenes and arias from operas by Wagner and Strauss. The Billboard top-five bestseller received rave reviews, like this one in Gramophone: “The arias highlight Voigt’s extraordinary ability to soar effortlessly and luminously above the orchestra with her trademark rich, lustrous, never hard or brittle voice.” Her recording of Strauss’s Egyptian Helen was also a Billboard bestseller, and was named one of the best CDs of the year by Opera News. A live recording of the 2003 Vienna State Opera Tristan und Isolde, in which Voigt made her headlining role debut, was released by Deutsche Grammophon. Signal highlights of the 2006-07 season for Ms. Voigt were her first staged performances in the title role in Strauss’s Salome, at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and a new production of Strauss’s Egyptian Helen staged for her at the Metropolitan Opera. Elsewhere she reprised two other signature Strauss parts – the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier and the title part in Ariadne auf Naxos, and closed the New York Philharmonic’s season by singing rare orchestral songs by Richard Strauss. A devotee of Broadway and American song, Deborah Voigt has given acclaimed performances of popular fare, including benefit concerts for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and New York Theatre Workshop. “Voigt...comes to pop-singing naturally… . If this were 1970, she would probably be given her own network variety show,” raved Opera News. She sang three concerts with Barbara Cook and Dianne Reeves at the Hollywood Bowl and made an exciting debut in Lincoln Center’s long-running “American Songbook” series, singing Broadway and popular standards on the topic of travel. Variety reported: “Deborah Voigt, perhaps the foremost dramatic operatic soprano of the day … [is] profoundly aware that each song has a story to tell; her delivery is expressively honest and her voice lustrous and creamy. … Voigt crosses the opera-Broadway boundary with grace and elegance, harboring a strength reserved for special moments. She is also in the possession of a devilish sense of humor, which was delightfully used to frame a lyric with a naughty smile.” Millions of viewers heard Ms. Voigt sing “America the Beautiful” on NBC’s nationwide broadcast of Macy’s Independence Day fireworks show in 2004, and later witnessed her majestic ride down Broadway in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Deborah Voigt studied at California State University at Fullerton. She was a member of San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, and won both the Gold Medal in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition and First Prize at Philadelphia’s Luciano Pavarotti Vocal Competition. Ms. Voigt is a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and was Musical America’s Vocalist of the Year 2003. She received a 2007 Opera News Award for distinguished achievement. |
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