Soprano Deborah Voigt now deemed fit for role

Deborah Voigt is finally putting on that little black dress.

On Monday, Voigt, the acclaimed U.S. soprano, will star in Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos" at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London: the very production from which she was fired in 2004.

At the time, the director, Christof Loy, proclaimed Voigt — a leading dramatic soprano, especially acclaimed for her singing of Strauss and Wagner — too fat to wear a sleek black cocktail dress he deemed integral to his concept.

Opera buffs around the world saw it as a blatant case of discrimination, and the dress has since become a symbol of skewed priorities among opera directors who value a singer's appearance over vocal artistry.

For the moment, Voigt, who had gastric-bypass surgery in 2004, is making light of the matter. Last week she and her publicists produced a video spoof, "Deborah Voigt: The Return of the Little Black Dress," and posted it on YouTube.

For Voigt, 47, there have been upsides to this humiliating experience. For one, she looks and feels terrific. After her surgery, this 5-foot-6 soprano reduced her dress size from 30 (at her heaviest) to 14, with resulting benefits to her confidence and health. In recent seasons she has been winning acclaim for portraying characters meant to look alluring, like Puccini's Tosca and, in a career milestone, Strauss' Salome, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2006.

However, she also has received varied reactions to her singing since her surgery, especially the colorings of her voice. Some opera buffs and critics detect a slight loss of warmth in her sound. Others counter that her voice has gained brightness and shimmer.

Voigt admits the process of adjusting to a different-size "resonating chamber," as she put it, took longer than she anticipated.

With her slimmer physique, Voigt said, she feels a new physical empowerment that comes through in her singing.

"I would like to believe, and do believe, that what I am able to bring dramatically is much more interesting, much more liberating and free for me," she said.

Her voice will increasingly be tested as she steadily moves into the most challenging roles of the dramatic-soprano repertory, including her first Bruennhilde in Wagner's "Ring" cycle, which she will sing under James Levine when the Metropolitan Opera unveils its new production, beginning in the 2010-11 season.