She’s Bringing Her Success Home

Local writers pegged soprano Deborah Voigt as a rising young opera star back in the early ‘80s, when she was winning competitions in Orange County and Los Angeles.

But they had no idea how right they were.

Now the former Anaheim resident ticks off regular engagements at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Vienna Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Opera Bastille in Paris. Not to mention dates with the New York and Munich philharmonics. And this isn’t a complete list.

She also has made several recordings, including Strauss’ Four Last Songs, which she will sing, along with Verdi arias, with the Pacific Symphony on Friday and Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. It will be her first Orange County engagement since 1993, when she shared top billing with Carol Vaness in Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” for Irvine-based Opera Pacific.

“I like to come back to Orange County,” Voigt said in a recent phone interview from Vienna, where she was singing the Kaiserin in Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten” at the Staatsoper.

“I consider it home base. I still have family and friends in that area.”

Voigt, who is in her late 30s, was born in Chicago. But she moved to Orange County as a teenager with her family, graduating from Placentia’s El Dorado High School in 1978.

She had always sung in church choirs, even as a child, and she anticipated going into contemporary Christian music because of her family’s involvement in the Baptist church.

After a false start in choral conducting at Chapman University--then Chapman College--she took a year off to work as a computer operator. But she continued to study voice at night, with the help of a scholarship from the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, and soon was back in school, studying with vocal coach Jane Paul at Cal State Fullerton.

“I fell into opera,” Voigt said. “It was really what my teacher sang.”

Opportunities soon began presenting themselves.

San Francisco Opera offered her a scholarship to a 10-week training program in 1985, and she took it, even though that meant leaving Cal State Fullerton a few weeks short of a bachelor’s degree. She stayed on at S.F. Opera for another two years, as an Adler Fellow.

Then she began winning major competitions--the gold medal at the 1990 Tchaikovsky International Competition, the $20,000 first prize at the Rosa Ponselle International Vocal Competition in Washington, D.C., also in 1990, and the prestigious $30,000 Richard Tucker Foundation Award in 1992.

Between those prizes, critic John Rockwell called her “one of the most important American singers to come along in years” in a 1991 New York Times review of her Ariadne for Boston Lyric Opera.

Her voice, Rockwell wrote, “sounded warm and solid and musically shaped. The obvious comparison, among earlier American dramatic sopranos, is Eileen Farrell.”

She made her Metropolitan Opera debut that same year as Amelia in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera,” and returned a year later to sing Chrysothemis in Strauss’ “Elektra.”

Voigt married John Leitch, whom she had met in San Francisco and who went on to become her personal agent, in 1990, moved with him to New York and credits him for pushing her to enter the Tchaikovsky competition. But the couple divorced two years ago.

“That whole experience was painful,” she said. “But everybody’s life contributes to what we show onstage. That was an important part of my maturity, even though it was not pleasant. It feels good to be on my own.”

Voigt now lives in Vero Beach, Fla., where she moved about eight years ago, though with her international career going blazes, she doesn’t get too many chances to spend time there.

“I’m enjoying Florida. Living on the beach is like a little vacation. And there’s no state income tax.”

Voigt is savvy about what roles she will accept and when, knowing that vocal burnout is a danger of moving too quickly into the heaviest dramatic repertory.

“I’ve been asked to sing [Wagner’s] Brunnhilde and Isolde,” she said, “but I only began singing Sieglinde three or four years ago. I love that role. After you sing Isolde, where do you go from there?”

But it can also be the character that puts her off.

“I’ve been asked to sing Turandot,” she points out, naming one of the most hard-bitten of opera’s heroines. “That can wait. I don’t like the part. What works for me are roles that show more femininity, more vulnerability. I’m not that character.”

Moreover, she doesn’t want to abandon singing Verdi. “I still have a lot of Italian repertory, which keeps that leggero [nimble] lightness in the voice. I’ve been really lucky. No boo-boos with respect to my repertory. So far, so good.”

Though her voice always earned praise, her acting skills were sometimes criticized. So about five years ago, she began studying acting with drama coach Sam Schacht at the Actors Studio in New York.

“I felt vocally--technically--I was pretty well settled,” she said. “But what makes a singer interesting to an audience is to see some difference, some improvement, something they didn’t see before.

“The first time they hear you, they say, ‘That’s a great voice.’ The second time, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a great voice.’ The third time, ‘What else can she do?’ ”

“I had been told I was not really expressing what I felt. I would work with a coach on what the text meant, what should the character be feeling. I had all that correct, but it wasn’t going beyond the footlights.”

At the time, she was singing Leonora in Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino.”

“We started with [the aria] ‘Pace, Pace.’ He said, ‘Read me the text.’ I started saying, ‘Pace, pace.’ He said, ‘In English: Say it as if you were asking for peace from God.’

“When I did that, I began to identify more with the character. It became more organic when it came from something I was feeling, rather than something I felt Leonora should be feeling.”

She worked with Schacht for about five months, but reviewers still tend to single out her voice over her acting abilities.

“I found him really helpful,” she said. “Singers at the beginning of their careers find it’s so difficult to sing well technically, there is so much to do, it fills up so much of your brain, it’s hard to find a stage presence, too.”

Education is close to her heart. She participates in a New York-based outreach program for grade-school children, titled “Young Audiences,” as her schedule permits.

“I do three classes for first, second and third grades. The first class, I teach them a song. The second, they teach me a song, and the third, we write something together. I love hearing when I walk into the room, ‘There’s the music lady.’

“It concerns me that we have so little music taught in schools,” she added. “Music was so central to my life when I was young. It’s sad that they’ve eliminated so many music programs in the schools.

“Kids are so inundated by pop culture. They can mimic pop singers but not sing for themselves. My interest is to get them to experience their own voices.”

In Orange County, she will also conduct a master class as part of a luncheon to benefit the Pacific Symphony and its educational programs.

“I hate the term ‘master,’ ” Voigt said. “It implies being responsible for one’s vocal technique, and I don’t feel confident in that. But I do have advice I can give.

“There are so many things to list about what to teach. I know this sounds very negative, but one of the things I’d say is, ‘If there’s anything else that you love, that’s something you should consider doing, because singing is so competitive.’

“I’d also say, ‘There are all kinds of careers to be had. To sing at the Met is wonderful. I would never have dreamed it. But there are other kinds of careers in music. Be happy with what you achieve.’

“Also, ‘Be realistic.’ When I was 24, I thought that my career was on its way. It had only begun.”

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Deborah Voigt will sing Strauss’ Four Last Songs and arias by Verdi with the Pacific Symphony, led by Carl St.Clair Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m., Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $18-$50. Master class: Thursday, 11 a.m., Westin South Coast Plaza, 686 Anton Blvd., Costa Mesa. $75. (714) 755-5799.