Johan Bohan Returns to Native South Africa in Rare Concert

South Africa's Hometown Hero.

"Hailed by many as South Africa's most famous vocal export, dramatic tenor Botha is one of the world's most sought-after singers. Now living in Vienna, Austria, Botha has returned to Gauteng, where he studied and made his stage debut (as Max in Von Weber's Der Freischütz in Roodepoort in 1989), for a special Johan Botha gala concert tomorrow. Presented by the Cape Town Opera the glorious romantic repertoire includes Verdi, Puccini, Leoncavallo and Lehár. The gala concert is a rare opportunity for opera lovers to see one of the world's foremost singers live on stage in Johannesburg....Sharing the stage in Mandela Trilogy with Botha are Bulgarian-born South African mezzo-soprano Anguelov; soprano and member of the Black Tie Ensemble Lehobye; Eastern Cape-born operatic soprano Teto; and multi-talented baritone Sixaba. The Cape Town Opera Voice of the Nation Ensemble and the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra will accompany the singers. Botha will be joined on stage by American operatic soprano Deborah Voigt at another one-night-only gala concert in Cape Town at the Artscape on Saturday, August 28." [Source]

PBS Features NY Philharmonic and Deborah Voigt For Opener

(Photo: Dario Acosta)

Deborah Voigt will appear with the New York Philharmonic on Wednesday, September 21, 2011 as part of the "Live From Lincoln Center" series on PBS which will broadcast the performance live. The program includes Samuel Barber's The School for Scandal Overture of 1931 and Andromache's Farewell, excerpts from Richard Strauss's Salome and Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser.

Deborah Voigt: Alcoholism, Obesity, Suicide Despair, Vocal Decline

Opera singer Deborah Voigt has collaborated with playwright Terrence McNally, director Francesca Zambello and pianist Kevin Stites, to create an autobiographical one-woman show titled "Voigt Lessons" which features 18 pieces of music to accompany her timeline. It premiered on last Friday at the Glimmerglass Festival. All the below excerpts are from the New York Times. Read the full article here.

The dramatic soprano singing in 2009.

"Though keeping the timeline a little vague, Ms. Voigt spoke courageously of suicidal despair, alcohol abuse and a low point of her life, when she 'jumped into a bottle and went into a 35-hour blackout.” That is long enough, she said, 'to fly around the world' or 'to sing two Ring cycles,' referring to Wagner’s epic four-opera Ring des Nibelungen, in which she has been appearing at the Metropolitan Opera. Ms. Voigt shared with her audience what she called the eight words that saved her life: 'My name is Debbie, and I’m an alcoholic.' She followed this admission with an elegantly unsentimental account of the pop standard 'Smile' ('Smile though your heart is aching')."

Carnegie Hall in 2004.

"About halfway through the program Ms. Voigt said that up to that point she had been avoiding the subject of 'fatness,' a condition she likened to an expletive. Before she underwent surgery, Ms. Voigt said, she was not 'full-figured' or 'Junoesque' or 'heavyset.' She was fat. At her worst, her weight hit 333 pounds, three digits she will never forget, she said."

Richard Tucker Gala 1992.

"In recent years some critics and opera buffs have noted with concern that Ms. Voigt’s voice is becoming brighter, a little hard-edged and less warm. Toward the end of 'Voigt Lessons' she acknowledged that her voice is changing in its colors and texture. But she feels good, she said; she is comfortable in her body and with her singing."

One confusing section in the NYTimes piece describes the soprano's desire to sing her first aria, but the author makes it unclear whether she only was mistaken about the aria not being in her fach or did she also think it was from the opera Tosca rather than Turandot: "In her youth Ms. Voigt was not really an opera fan, she said. When she finally enrolled at California State University at Fullerton, to study with a voice professor, Jane Paul, she arrived at her first lesson hoping to sing an absolutely beautiful aria she had come upon: 'Nessun dorma' from Puccini’s Tosca. Ms. Paul explained that this was a tenor aria. Well, in 'Voigt Lessons,' Ms. Voigt sang it, an exuberant performance that drew a rousing ovation from the delighted audience."

Deborah Voigt during the rehearsals of Annie Get Your Gun at Glimmerglass 2011.

Deborah Voigt Gets Her Gun Ready For Glimmerglass

"Safe to say that Wagner’s Brünnhilde would never brag about shootin’ a wart off’n grandpappy’s nose, despite the warrior that she is. But then maybe she would in an alternative singing universe, the kind Deborah Voigt, the soprano, has entered here at the Glimmerglass Festival. Ms. Voigt, a heralded interpreter of Wagner, Verdi and Strauss heroines, is appearing as the backwoods sharpshooter of the title in Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, which opens Saturday." [Source]

Talk About Debbie Downer, Critics Need to Pay More Attention

As Deborah Voigt transitions from her performances of Die Walküre at the Metropolitan Opera to a concert of Broadway show-stoppers at Carnegie Hall, the music critic largely neglects another star on stage. Paulo Szot, who has sung at the MET and New York City Opera as well as off-Broadway in South Pacific, joined Ms. Voigt as a special guest for the performance. However, this is all the New York Times music critic decided to include about him in the review: "...the dashing baritone Paulo Szot was special guest and Ms. Voigt’s on-and-off singing partner."

Paulo Szot and Deborah Voigt getting down with Broadway classics (Photo: Julieta Cervantes/NYTimes)

And as for Ms. Voigt, this was the only kind thing he could find to say,"The problems began with the microphone. Ms. Voigt’s decision to use one throughout most of the program turned out to be an exercise in self-suppression. She muted her power to create a more informal, intimate attitude, making her voice sound ragged and occasionally uncertain, if still essentially operatic. Only when she dispensed with amplification to sing 'My Man’s Gone Now,' in a Porgy and Bess suite, did her magnificent sound unfurl in scorching tongues of fire."
[Source]

Deborah Voigt Reveals Differences Between Theater & Opera

Voigt as Brünnhilde (Photo: Brigitte Lacombe)

"One of Debbie’s close friends is Jack Doulin, a casting agent who Debbie met through his work with New York Theater Workshop. She told me that she had been having some interesting conversations with him about the differences between how the theater world mounts a production compared to how it’s done in the opera world. 'In the theater, the company has weeks of previews before a paying audience before they are critiqued. But in opera, we get less than half the rehearsal time, and no chance to sing it for an audience and take their temperature, and we are critiqued the night that it is done before a paying audience for the first time. It’s really not fair! Wouldn’t it be nice to have this wonderful cast rehearse on the Lepage set for three weeks for an audience and then invite criticism?' [Source]