Deborah Voigt is about to take it all off.
At least that’s the teasing impression the Illinois-born singer gives as she glides through the title character’s notorious striptease in a recent rehearsal for Richard Strauss’ “Salome” at the Civic Opera House.
Having shed some 140 pounds following her widely publicized dismissal by London’s Royal Opera because she was too hefty for a little black dress deemed essential to an opera production, a slenderized Voigt is preparing for a career milestone — her first staged “Salome,” in a new production opening this weekend at Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Will she show off her new body — all of it — as the amoral biblical princess? Will her drastic weight reduction affect her singing? Critics, opera buffs and Debbie devotees will be flocking to the Civic Opera House over the coming month to find out how well Voigt, one of the most admired dramatic sopranos of her generation, copes with the many aspects of a demanding role that she has only previously sung complete in concert form.
Since the start of rehearsals less than three weeks ago for director Francesca Zambello’s new production, everybody’s lips (including the diva’s) have been sealed as to how revealing Salome’s seductive dance of the seven veils would be.
At the rehearsal I am attending, the answer seems clear: Pretty revealing.
“Hip-throw right, four times — this is essentially a cakewalk with a figure-eight,” choreographer Jane Comfort tells Voigt as the latter executes her steps, tentatively at first but with increasing confidence as the rehearsal goes on. The soprano is wearing a rainbow of silk chiffon veils over a plain white shift (which she will trade for a body stocking for the actual performances). She looks a lot more trim and fit than just about any modern singer who has portrayed the amoral seductress.
For rehearsal purposes, Voigt’s movements are mirrored by Comfort and August Tye, Lyric’s ballet mistress. The three women promenade in a graceful pas de trois, each swirling a veil in front of her. Zambello offers suggestions of her own from her perch on one of the ruined columns of designer George Tsypin’s abstract set, while Lyric music director Andrew Davis conducts an “orchestra” consisting of pianist Bill Billingham.
By now Voigt’s really into Salome’s hootchy-kootchy routine, shaking her hips, thrusting her bosom, discarding the veils one by one over the stage. Voigt cradles one of the props, a ram’s head. Zambello tells her how to hold it as she vamps toward the footlights. “It’s more phallic if you hold it in front of you,” the director says.
At what looks to be the climax of the dance, a hush descends over the theater. Voigt raises the chiffon gauze high over her head. Dense, swirling chords pour from the piano — and Salome drops her veil.
“Perfect, thanks,” says Zambello as she calls for a break.
Religious upbringing
Clearly Voigt, 46, has come a long way from her strictly religious upbringing in suburban Mt. Prospect to the notorious “black dress” incident in London to her dramatic weight loss to the new “Salome” in Chicago.
Her very public firing by Covent Garden may have been the fodder for an international furor, but her subsequent re-emergence as a much svelter singer made her a mass-media darling. Now, a glowing Voigt is obviously happier in her body than ever before and, what’s more, is pleased to find that a new galaxy of operatic heroines (“pretty girl parts,” as she calls them) awaits her.
In 2003, the diva was dismissed from a production of Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” at the Royal Opera for being too fat to fit into a costume. When she let the fact slip to a British interviewer the following year, she had no idea her comments about Covent Garden would be seized upon by virtually every news organization in the world. (“The Fat Lady Slims” and “The Slim Lady Sings” were typical sexist headlines.)
Between nibbles of a low-cal sandwich during lunch in her dressing room, Voigt says her decision to undergo radical stomach surgery (which took place in New York in 2004) was made well before the Royal Opera gave her the sack.
“I have struggled with my weight all my life,” the singer says, with typical candor. “Everybody who’s followed my career knows that; Covent Garden knew that when they hired me.” She smiles at the irony of the situation. “They had to buy me out of a contract, so if you want to get really technical, you could say they paid for my surgery.”
At her heaviest, Voigt reportedly weighed about 350 pounds. After losing weight in degrees, she’s now just over 140, down from a size 30 to a size 14. The surgery, she explains, has made it a lot easier for her to inhabit a character Strauss declared should be “a 16-year-old princess with the voice of Isolde.”
“Being able to move around well, roll around the floor and chase Salome’s stepfather around is very exciting for me — something I didn’t really anticipate happening in my career, ever,” Voigt says. “It’s really interesting to see how much easier things are now that I have so many more choices as to what to do and how to be expressive with my body.”
She loves being able to ooze pure sex onstage, for a change, since “most ladies I portray are either praying, dying or crying!”
“Her new trim figure [allows her] to take chances and physicalize the youthful character of Salome in a way she wasn’t capable of doing before,” says director Zambello. “Suddenly she has this amazing discovery about herself, which also is great for the character, because Salome is discovering her own sensuality and her coming of age.
Fresh start
“Debbie is, in a way, everything a director hopes for, particularly in such a difficult role as this. To work with someone who is fresh to it but is really able to sing it means you can focus on the character, text and interpretation.”
Be that as it may, the big question on the minds of opera lovers coming to the new “Salome” will be: Have her vocal amplitude and gleaming quality been in any way impaired by her striking weight loss?
Audiences have long accepted the sight of full-figured heroes and heroines in opera, because it was their singing, not their girth, that mattered. And many operas, Wagner’s and Strauss’ in particular, require singers with barrel-like air cavities and powerful stomach and abdomen musculature to propel sound over huge orchestras. Change a singer’s fleshy support system and you could change the quality of their sound.
Some believe diva Maria Callas damaged her voice by losing weight dramatically in the 1950s, although many voice experts dispute that legend. The debate has flared anew since Voigt’s startling physical transformation.
“Some people have felt that Voigt’s voice is a little less warm than it was before her weight loss,” says Anthony Tommasini, chief music critic of the New York Times. “But in the performances I’ve heard since then she has sounded radiant. Though it has taken her time to adjust technically to her new body, she seems to be gaining confidence and vocal security with each appearance.”
I ask Voigt if she believes her voice has changed since the surgery. “Maybe the timbre is more silvery than gold, but the size is the same,” she replies. Then, hedging her bets, she adds, “I am only hearing [my voice] from the inside, so I can only speak about the sensation of singing. I leave it to [others] to debate whether my voice is smaller or whether the color has changed.”
One thing’s for sure: Voigt cannot easily separate her voice from her body and her self-image, nor does she even try to.
“I still think of myself as a big girl,” the singer admits. “I try not to get on the scale every day, because you can make yourself crazy doing that, but for somebody who has been through this, it’s very difficult not to. By American standards, I’m the average size for a woman.” Still, she says, she knows she’ll never be “small” in the mold of TV and movie stars.
Given the weight struggles of her past, Voigt says she was “just blown away” by how beautiful she appears in Victor Skrebneski’s Lyric Opera 2006-07 season poster, which shows a sultry, seemingly naked Voigt, spectacularly bewigged and standing atop a plinth.
Beautiful also is a good word to describe the feelings backstage at Lyric Opera now that Voigt has returned to the company that has showcased her in two of her signature roles, Sieglinde in Wagner’s “Die Walkure” (2003) and the title part in “Ariadne auf Naxos” (1998) — sans black dress.
“The whole orchestra just melted when they heard her the other day in rehearsal,” says Elizabeth Cifani, principal harpist of the Lyric, whose first opera after joining the orchestra in 1968 was “Salome.” “She’s got this amazing, big, Wagnerian voice with high notes she can scale down to a pianissimo — you don’t usually hear Wagnerians do that. You hear the emotion in her voice and you think, `My gosh, this woman’s got everything!'”
So what is a nice suburban Chicago girl from a strictly religious family — whose musical life began in a Baptist church in Mt. Prospect — doing portraying one of the baddest of opera’s bad girls?
“I know my poor parents are gonna be slightly horrified,” Voigt says, rolling her eyes. “I keep telling them it is a story from the Bible!”
A sign at 5 years old
One of her earliest musical memories was singing the hymn “Fairest Lord Jesus” with a fellow 5-year-old. “She made a mistake and I corrected her — this was probably a sign of things to come,” the singer says with a chuckle. Her family moved to Orange County (Calif.), when she was 14. Later, she ended up taking voice lessons from the wife of her school’s choral conductor, who happened to be an opera singer. Ultimately, following a win in the Metropolitan Opera regional auditions in 1985, she dropped out of college to enter the San Francisco Opera’s training program; and everything has been coming up high C’s ever since.
Well, almost everything. Voigt’s seven-year marriage to her high school sweetheart, John Leitch, ended in divorce in 1995. In recent months she has found a new romance, she adds, but “it’s very early [in the relationship], so I’m not gonna say more about it.”
Before we say our goodbyes, the diva from Mt. Prospect wants me to know she’s “thrilled” her new, svelter appearance has opened up so many career opportunities for her.
“I think it will be beneficial to me in terms of [vocal] longevity not to take on all the Bruennhildes I had planned to take on in the past,” Voigt says.
In the immediate future, she sees glamorous heroines opening up for her that might not previously have been offered her –Tosca, Minnie in “The Girl of the Golden West,” Maddalena in “Andrea Chenier.”
The sparkle in her deep blue eyes holds out the promise that, for Deborah Voigt, the best is yet to come.
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jvonrhein@tribune.com
