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RECITAL REVIEW
November 20, 2005
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By Stephanie Friedman
No one who came to hear Deborah Voigt sing at Zellerbach on Sunday had
come to hear the program, an incongruous mixture of selections. They had come to
hear the beautiful voice, and to bask in the aura of a real diva for whom a
bit of ribaldry is not too lowbrow. Voigt satisfied in this respect, from
her entrance in a diva-perfect black dress with spangled glitters to her
last sinuous, throaty vocal line.
To be sure, the program included songs by the wonderful song composer,
Richard Strauss — one of her signature composers. There were also,
inexplicably, two songs, in Russian, by Tchaikovsky. Voigt does love
passionate songs; perhaps that's why they were on the program. One of
them, Ya li v pole da ne travushka byla? (Was I not a little blade of
grass?), is beautiful as well as passionate, but Voigt's performance of both
songs was marred by inauspicious Russian diction and a tendency to oversing at
a loud dynamic.
A number of American songs on the program found Voigt completely at home. But this could not be said for the set of three Schumannesque songs by Amy Beach, composed in 1899, that opened the recital. I
could see no reason for Voigt choosing these middling songs. It's acceptable for a composer to set indifferent poems,
such as these by Robert Browning, but only if the composer's settings
make something better of the poems, which Mrs. Beach did not do. Voigt used
too much dramatic power here, knocking several pitches off-center and adding
little to the enjoyment of the songs, though she sang them, as she sang
everything, from the heart. Unfortunately, that's not enough.
With the opening lines of Ich trage meine Minne (I bear my love), one of three songs by Strauss, the singer's voice was clearer and more focused. She was committed to these songs and was clearly more secure, singing them by heart (unlike the Beach, for which she used music). Nevertheless, Voigt's treatment of Befreit (Freed) was too thick for the music. Pitch changes were often indistinct, such as the half-step rise in the phrase "Es wird sehr bald sein" (It will be very soon). For a Strauss singer with opulent tone, Voigt does not give herself altogether to the line, which should float firmly but serenely over the harmonic and rhythmic changes in the piano. Too often Voigt pushed her voice beyond the limits of judicious control, causing an overly active, pitch-blurring vibrato. The result was plenty of drama and expressiveness, but not much variety of color; in addition, under such pressure the pitches in her middle and lower voice lost focus and sounded flat. When Voigt sang simply, the results were pleasing and varied, as they were almost uniformly with the works of more up-to-date American composers. Ben Moore, who has written for Voigt, was represented by a number of songs to poems by Joyce, Robert Herrick, and Elizabeth Bishop. Voigt clearly feels comfortable with them and sings them artlessly. This Heart that Flutters (Joyce) is a lovely song and bloomed under Voigt's unadorned treatment. Even though some of the word settings are awkward — for example, in To the Virgins to Make Much of Time (Herrick), the word "sun," set on a low note, was followed by "The higher he's a-getting" — there are also felicitious phrases: ". . . deep clear and liquid slow," beautiful words in Bishop's I am in need of music, beautifully set. The song has a lovely piano introduction, played authoritatively by Voigt's accompanist, the suave Brian Zeger. Finally, in songs by William Bolcom and Stephen Sondheim, Voigt really showed her diva stuff. Bolcom's "Toothbrush Time" from his Cabaret Songs sounded made for her. Her facial expressions were diverting as she portrayed a woman who is too lonely not to invite the man to stay over but can't face 10 A.M. the next morning — the toothbrush time — when he reveals his less fetching qualities. Voigt failed, however, to convey the pathos of another of the cabaret songs by Bolcom, "George." The song about a transvestite who sings Puccini in a soprano voice, whose door is open to all, and who is finally murdered by a stranger in the middle of singing "Un bel di," is not at all funny. Or if it does have its bittersweetness, none of that can come through if the singer camps it up, as Voigt did. The song is not great, but in the hands of a more discerning interpreter, it nevertheless would tell.
Sondheim's Losing My Mind, on the other hand, is a wonderful song and Voigt delivered it affectingly, though in the repeat of several lines she oversang again. I Never Do Anything Twice was as arch and naughty as it needed to be and, as the closing number, brought the house down. Voigt's English diction was so good in these last few songs, the omission of the texts — on purpose by the singer — was never a problem. In the first encore, Zueignung of Strauss, Voigt returned easily to her upper range after the low tessitura of the cabaret songs. Wagner Roles, composed for the singer by Ben Moore, is hilarious, but with all the Verdi, Strauss, and other roles she's been singing, how much longer will that song continue to sell? "Can't Help Lovin' That Man," from Showboat by Jerome Kern was powerfully felt and expertly sung.
(Stephanie Friedman, mezzo-soprano, is retired from more than three decades of singing in opera and concert, here and abroad.)
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Deborah Voigt
