Deborah Voigt Sings Excerpts From Wagner and Strauss
Roles She’s Not Yet Sung in New York

By -

Met Opera’s 125th Anniversary Gala on March 15

This month, soprano Deborah Voigt will introduce tempting passages from two iconic roles she has yet to sing in New York . At the gala celebration of the Metropolitan Opera’s 125th anniversary on March 15, Voigt is one of a handful of artists to have the honor of singing two excerpts during the evening. She has performed the role of Richard Strauss’s Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier in Europe , but has not yet presented it at home. And she has already thrilled a Tanglewood audience with her Brünnhilde – at least the heroine’s final “immolation” scene from Götterdämmerung. (The New York Times reported: “To no one’s surprise, she already sounded glorious as Brünnhilde.”) At the Met on March 15 she will sing the final scene of Wagner’s Siegfried (with Ben Heppner) and of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (the famous trio, with Natalie Dessay and Susanne Mentzer). James Levine conducts the two-part gala that boasts a host of stars as well as the Met’s chorus and orchestra.

Deborah Voigt’s Wagner roles at the Met have included, most recently, Isolde. New York magazine selected her performance opposite Ben Heppner as one of the classical music highlights of 2008: “Cold-and-flu season kept Ben Heppner as Tristan and Deborah Voigt as Isolde from singing together until the last performance in the Met’s run. But when the sneezing stopped, that night proved worth the wait. Both singers breathed and phrased in such miraculous sympathy that it almost seemed as if they had prepped together for a joint comeback.” Voigt has just finished a run of Isoldes at Chicago’s Lyric Opera that was no less successful, with Chicago Tribune critic John von Rhein calling it “a triumph” and describing Voigt as “today’s Isolde of choice”.

Deborah Voigt added the role of the Rosenkavalier’s Marschallin to her extensive list of Strauss heroines in 2005 in Berlin under Christian Thielemann (who also conducted her debut Isolde in Vienna in 2003). Germany’s influential Welt am Sonntag wrote of the Strauss: “Voigt’s flowing phrasing, her intelligent shaping of character and her precise diction are rare – a psychological character study of a wise aging woman.” And Musical America’s Berlin correspondent reported that Voigt “sang with the same radiant voice that has won her worshipful fans throughout the operatic world; and – no doubt about it – she conquered.” When Ms. Voigt sang her first Vienna Marschallin in 2005, the Vienna Standard’s critic enthused, “Deborah Voigt’s Marschallin puts everyone else in the shade. She stops time by bringing this artificial creature to life in a captivating and natural way, and manages to avoid any sticky sentimentality with her virtuosic performance.”

The Met’s 125th-anniversary gala should be a thrill for opera lovers all over the world – not least because of the opportunity to hear the soprano “widely acknowledged as the greatest living interpreter of the dramatic heroines of Wagner and Richard Strauss.” (Musical America)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In ...
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

Teaching Composition – What are we trying to achieve

By -
In the process of learning composition I have spent time with a number of instructors who have encouraged me to write twelve-tone, pitch-class, electro-acoustic and other forms of experimental techniques. No matter how much I might understand and appreciate the work of other composers in the genres, these are not forms of music I resonate with. They are simply not forms of music I listen to and I struggle with the idea of writing them. However, in a Master Class by Libby Larsen she made the comment, “Learn them all, because all forms of music have something to offer.” This I very much agree. There are elements of each of the above mentioned forms (and others) that I do resonate with. Berg’s Violin Concerto is a beautiful twelve-tone work, although it is possible to look at numerous sections of the music with a “tonal” analysis. Another composer friend, Gary Bachlund commented that using these techniques can narrow the choices for how to compose a piece of work. If you look at ...
Read more