Deborah Voigt is one of the world’s leading dramatic sopranos, internationally revered for her performances in the operas of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. She has also portrayed some of the iconic heroines in Italian opera to great acclaim. An active recitalist and performer of Broadway standards and popular songs, Voigt appears regularly, as both performer and host, in the Metropolitan Opera’s The Met: Live in HD series, which is transmitted live to movie theaters across the United States and overseas. She is also co-creator of Voigt Lessons, a one-woman show she developed with award-winning playwright Terrence McNally and director Francesca Zambello.

Through her stage performances and television appearances, she is known for the singular power and beauty of her voice. A leading dramatic soprano, she has portrayed some of the iconic heroines in German and Italian opera to great acclaim, including Brünnhilde in Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle, perhaps the most challenging role in all music. An active recitalist and performer of Broadway standards and popular songs, Voigt has an extensive discography and has given many enthusiastically received master classes.  

Beloved as a “Dramatic soprano and down-home Diva,” she gained renown beyond that rarefied world when she was summarily fired from a production at London’s Royal Opera House. She was perceived, it seemed, as too large for the little black dress she was supposed to wear (in an art form famous for its zaftig divas). A risky gastric bypass surgery led to major weight loss, but much of her adoring public never knew about the fallout of that dramatic decision: an insidious cross-addiction that led her from food addiction to severe alcoholism, depression, and the brink of destruction. In her candid  memoir, Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva, Voigt for the first time shares her story—of music and faith, of devastating addictions and recovery, and of the backstage dramas behind the glamorous curtain that is opera.