Deborah Voigt
Born: 4th August 1960, Wheeling, Illinois, USA
Nationality: American
Artist's website: https://deborahvoigt.com/
Deborah Voigt was born in 1960 and grew up near Chicago, where she began singing in a Southern Baptist choir as a small girl. Following studies at California State University, she was a finalist in the Met Council National Auditions in 1985 and came to widespread attention after singing the title-role in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos for Boston Lyric Opera in 1991. Ariadne went on to become one of her signature-roles, though it saw Voigt become the subject of the much-publicised ‘Little Black Dress’ controversy in 2004 when she was asked to stand down from a Royal Opera House production because of costuming concerns (Voigt subsequently underwent gastric bypass surgery and lost an estimated 100 pounds of weight, returning to the stage after a short sabbatical to sing her first Tosca and Salome). In 2011 she sang Brünnhilde in Robert Lepage’s new Ring Cycle for the Metropolitan Opera, which was released on DVD and Blu-ray the following year; her discography also includes scenes from Tristan und Isolde and Siegfried opposite Plácido Domingo, the Empress on Giuseppe Sinopoli’s Die Frau ohne Schatten and (on DVD) the title-roles in La Gioconda and La fanciulla del West.