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Voigt Plays to Adoring Fans


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Voigt Plays to Adoring Fans

By Ronald Blum

Associated Press

April 9, 2004

NEW YORK (AP) -- Deborah Voigt did not wear a little black dress for her Carnegie Hall recital debut. Instead, she sang about one, bringing the concert to a halt as the audience erupted in applause and stomped its feet.

The 43-year-old soprano has been making headlines since London's Royal Opera dropped her from a revival of Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos." She wouldn't fit into the costume for the title character in Christof Loy's modern-dress production, and the company was unwilling to alter the attire.

She received an unusually robust ovation when she walked on stage for Wednesday night's concert, a sign that the audience was aware of her recent travails.

The highlight came during her second encore, Ben Moore's comic sendup "Wagner Roles." With Moore in the audience, Voigt's version had four new lines inserted just before the end:

"And this business I'm in ... well it's really a mess ... not to mention the deal ... with that little black dress."

The audience loved it. And to hammer home her point, she inserted an extra composer into the final line, "I'll keep singing those Wagner -- and Strauss -- roles!!"

She followed up with a few of Bruennhilde's "Hojotoho!" cries from Wagner's "Die Walkuere," a role she not yet taken on.

Voigt has sharp comic timing, which she displayed during the second half of the program in "Toothbrush Time" and "George" from William Bolcom's "Cabaret Songs" and Stephen Sondheim's bawdy, double entendre-filled "I Never Do Anything Twice," from "The Seven Percent Solution."

She even got to show off her whistling ability during Ives' "Memories: a. Very Pleasant, b. Rather Sad."

As for the rest of the night, Voigt displayed the powerful, gleaming voice that has made her one of the world's top singers.

Accompanied by pianist Brian Zeger and wearing a shimmering silver dress and cape with feathered trim, she started off with four songs by Schubert, three by Strauss and two by Tchaikovsky. What distinguishes Voigt is her ability to maintain pretty notes throughout the register and her ability to sustain power at the top.

Her encores included Strauss' "Fruehlingsfeier," "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's "Showboat" and "Io son l'umile ancella (I am the humble handmaid)" from Cilea's "Adriana Lecouvreur."

The audience kept cheering. The voice sold the tickets, not the dress.

Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press

http://www.musicalamerica.com/newsStory.cf...yID=1&cookies=1

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