Mozart, Verdi, Strauss, Respighi, Beach, and Bernstein: Deborah Voigt, soprano, Brian Zeger, piano, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 2.5.2007 (BJ)

 

There is a common belief that, when singers take on the challenge of losing large amounts of weight, they put their voices at risk. The evident decline in Maria Callas’s vocal security after she became a slim person might be regarded as bearing out that view, though in her case there were other factors that may well have been more important. It happens that I never heard Deborah Voigt in the flesh (if you will pardon the expression) before the gastric bypass operation that has helped her shed well over 100 pounds, so I cannot compare the “before” and “after” states of the American soprano’s voice. All I can say on the subject is that I find it hard to believe she could ever have sounded better than she did in this enterprisingly, intelligently planned and sumptuously sung recital. She looked stunning, moreover, and her stage manner, varied with an occasional informal word to her audience, was full of charm and free from pomposity.

It was one of those evenings in which every element fell beautifully into place. The choice of music, to start with, offered many rewarding discoveries even for experienced listeners. How many of us, after all, have encountered Mozart’s Masonic cantata, Die ihr des unermesßlichen Weltalls Schöpfer ehrt” in other than recorded form–or Verdi’s, Respighi’s, and Amy Beach’s songs in any medium at all? You might have expected Ms. Voigt’s voice to be too big for Mozart, but she refined her production cleverly enough to avoid any sense of incongruity.

Verdi, even in the relatively unexplored field of his early songs, is closer to Ms. Voigt’s familiar Fach. Here she was able to let her glorious tone body forth in full splendor, at once brilliant, warm, and sensitively shaped to match the expression appropriate to each song, whether in the sorrowful introspection of “Non t’accostare” and the Goethe-derived “Deh, pietoso,” the romantic afflatus of “In solitaria stanza,” or the anti-romantic irony of the later “Stornello.” In these songs, and in Strauss’ “Schlechtes Wetter,” “Ach, Lieb, ich muß nun scheiden,” and “Lied der Frauen,” what was perhaps most impressive was the sheer boldness of her singing. Supported at every turn by her skillful pianist, Brian Zeger, she took no easy ways out of the vocal challenges she faced, and the result was an inimitable feeling of freedom and exhilaration about the performance.

After intermission it was the turn of Respighi, whose “Contrasto,” “Nebbie,” “Notte,” and “Povero core” were all well worth this rare hearing. Then Ms. Voigt moved on to the English language, with a group of accomplished Browning settings by Amy Beach. The official program ended with a sequence of songs by Leonard Bernstein, including the sadly topical “So pretty” on a text by Betty Comden and Adolph Green (“I had to ask my teacher why/War was making all those people die” . . . “They must die for peace, you understand”), the liltingly cabaret-ish “It’s gotta be bad to be good,” and “Somewhere,” from West Side Story.

That was happily not the last word. Encores followed in the shape of Strauss’ “Zueignung,” sung with glorious fervor and seemingly inexhaustible richness of tone; Irving Berlin’s “I love a piano” (at the end of which the singer matched action to words by sitting down beside Mr. Zeger to cap the number with a dashing duet); and Jerome Kern’s “Can’t help lovin’ dat man.” Some commentators have found Ms. Voigt’s vocal equipment too grandiose to sound at home in such non-operatic fare, but I thought she did all these songs wonderfully–I can’t wait to hear her sing some of the Ives songs.

In conclusion, perhaps I may be permitted to offer a word of advice to the management of the hall. Welcome as is the inclusion of full texts and translations in the program book if the lights are turned down to a considerably reduced level, and the words are printed in a very light typeface and what looked like about 6-point size, they are very difficult to read.  It was even more to Deborah Voigt’s credit that she conveyed the meaning of her songs so persuasively, when it was obviously impossible for most of her listeners to follow the texts.

 

Bernard Jacobson