The Anti-Diva

Deborah Voigt, soprano
Brian Zeger, piano
Music of Verdi, Richard Strauss, Beach, Bernstein
January 14, 2007
Dorothy Chandler Pavillion
Los Angeles, CA.

Q: What’s the difference between a soprano and a terrorist?
A: You can negotiate with a terrorist.

If you had to come up with a few adjectives describing the stereotypical opera star, wallflowers like Maria Callas and Kathleen Battle, what would they be? Arrogant? Imperious? Demanding? As someone who has spent more than a few hours hunched over a piano with a soprano wheedling me to take it from Bar 32, but just a touch louder/softer/faster/slower/happier/sadder, I would add a few others: words that I won’t use on this site because I expect my kids to see it.

Which brings us to the anti-diva, Debbie Voigt. Is there a less pretentious operatic star out there? Someone as gifted and as self-deprecating? She’s a graduate of Cal State Fullerton (a far cry from the Juilliards and Eastmans) and close friends with Desperate Housewives creator Mark Cherry, and if that isn’t testament to her lack of pretentiousness, I don’t know what is.

She brought an unpredictable program to the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in January—Verdi, R. Strauss, Beach, Bernstein, presented in recital by Los Angeles Opera—and as serious, or serene, as things got, the appeal of the program lay in the pauses between the songs. After a thundering, pealing, luxuriant rendition of Beach’s “The year’s at the spring,” a song that goes from Zero-to-80 in 16 bars, she stepped back during the wild applause, and when things got quiet, offered this comment while looking at her shoetips: “I always liked that one.” And now we do, too.

My daughter was with me. After the last number (Gershwin’s“I love a piano,” with Voigt singing the first two verses, and then sitting at the piano bench next to Brian Zeger, her able accompanist, and pounding a ragtime solo herself to close it out), I looked at my girl and told her: “See…she’s proof that you can be one of the world’s greatest opera singers, and still be a decent person.”