“She often cried at the lessons, and I said, ‘For heaven sakes, let me teach you voice,’ instead of being a psychiatrist,” Paul explains. But, she was so confused. She said, ‘I don't know if I'll ever be anything, I can't do it’ — all the things one says when one is unsure. I said, ‘Be patient, be patient, believe.’ And she did!”

Of Paul, Voigt says, “She was a taskmaster. I think the thing I really respect about her is that musically, she didn't let me get away with anything. She taught me a lot of really good lessons that have done me wellover the years, things like being a good musician and being prepared, to being a good colleague.”

And what a musician she's become.

Since her early, critically acclaimed successes in Richard Strauss' “Ariadne auf Naxos” and “Elektra” with the Boston Lyric and Metropolitan Operas, respectively, Voigt's career, like her rich and lustrous voice, has soared.

The Wall Street Journal has described her performance as “seemingly effortless singing.” and USAToday says of her, “There comes a point in a Deborah Voigt opera performance, at the end of a difficult aria, when you think she has given her all. Suddenly, the voice hits overdrive - and a whole new level of vocal power. Audiences go wild.”

Many consider her unequalled in her repertoire of operas by German composers Richard Wagner — “Tristan und Isolde,” “Lohengrin,” “Die Walküre” - and Strauss. ” Continue »