Voigt Went the Drastic Surgery Route

[Ralph]

From The New York Times:


March 27, 2005
With Surgery, Soprano Sheds a Brünnhilde Body
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Deborah Voigt, arguably the leading dramatic soprano singing today, has a gleaming voice that easily soars over the largest Wagnerian orchestra. But big voices tend to come in big bodies, and Ms. Voigt, to her dismay, long fit the stereotype of the oversize opera singer.

Last spring her weight became international news when word spread that she had been fired from a production of Strauss's "Ariadne auf Naxos" at Covent Garden in London because the director deemed her too large to look right in a sleek black dress that was crucial to his staging concept.

What few knew at the time was that Ms. Voigt, who has struggled with her weight since adolescence, had already decided to undergo the most drastic treatment for obesity - gastric bypass surgery.

On Tuesday, she disclosed in an interview that last June 7, when she would have been singing at Covent Garden had she not been let go, she had the procedure, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. She is now 100 pounds lighter.

Ms. Voigt, 44, said she knew that surgery could be "extremely dangerous" for a singer. Opera singers who lose significant amounts of weight have been known to lose vocal luster as well, Maria Callas being the most notable example.

But she was willing to take the risk. "I had no choice," Ms. Voigt explained. Over the years she had tried everything to lose weight: crash dieting, liquid fasts, a gastric bubble and, worst of all for her, the diet pill combination fen-phen, which she said gave her bouts of manic energy.

"I'd be up cleaning out my closets at 3 in the morning," she said. And like many overweight people, she eventually regained whatever pounds she had lost.

For Ms. Voigt, who acknowledged she was a compulsive eater, gastric bypass surgery, which involves creating a small pouch out of the top of the stomach and connecting it to half of the small intestine, is "a blessing," she said. The tiny capacity it leaves takes away the choice about eating.

"You will comply," she said, "because if you don't, you're going to be very, very ill."

Ms. Voigt, who resumed performing just seven weeks after surgery, has been encouraged by the strong critical reaction to her singing since then. She said she was going public now because everywhere she goes people ask about her new look. "I felt it was time to talk about it," she said. "I don't want to be dishonest."

She is, though, reluctant to be too specific about her weight. She will say that at her heaviest she wore a size 30 dress. Last week at Saks Fifth Avenue, the 5-foot-6-inch soprano proudly bought her first size 14. Her goal is a 12, which will mean, she estimated, losing another 30 pounds.

During the interview, at an apartment near Lincoln Center where Ms. Voigt, who lives in Florida, is staying, she sat in a narrow living room chair and bragged of now being able to cross her legs comfortably. Audiences in New York will have a chance to see the slimmer soprano on April 4 when she sings the role of Amelia in the first of eight performances of the Metropolitan Opera's revival of Verdi's "Ballo in Maschera."

To face up to her fears, Ms. Voigt sought information and soul mates online (at obesityhealth.com). She has also continued working with her therapist on longstanding emotional issues. By talking about her surgery, she said, she hopes to draw attention to the problem of obesity and advances in surgical treatment for it.

A decade ago, there were fewer than 20,000 operations a year for obesity in the United States, according to Dr. Marc Bessler, the director of the Center for Obesity Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Last year there were 150,000, he said, of which 75 percent were gastric bypasses of the type Ms. Voigt had.

As with all invasive surgeries, there are risks. But the risks for a singer seem especially high. Most people assume that fine operatic voices emanate from the throat and a wondrous pair of vocal cords. It would be more accurate to say that the voice passes through the throat and vocal cords, but emanates from the diaphragm, which supports the column of sound.

So wasn't the thought of a surgeon cutting into her abdomen terrifying?

"I wasn't worried about the poking around in my abdomen," she said. "I was worried about the effects of anesthesia and about having a tube put down my throat." To minimize potential damage, her surgeon used the narrowest tube possible.

Ms. Voigt has never accepted the notion that only supersize singers can have supersize voices. Birgit Nilsson, one of the greatest Wagnerian sopranos of the 20th century, is "a big woman with a big cavity," Ms. Voigt said. But she was not obese. Ms. Nilsson, who was born in rural Sweden, has the physique of a hardy country gal. A soprano can't be a slip of a thing and sing Brünnhilde. But she need not be enormous, either.

Still, as Ms. Voigt explained, since her surgery she has had to make adjustments in her singing. "There is no question that I have to think about my technique more than I did," she said. "The sort of automatic engagement of the abdominal muscles from the excess weight doesn't happen anymore."

So far she has been pleased with the results. In November, she sang the role of Elisabeth in Wagner's "Tannhäuser" at the Met to great acclaim. This month, in a review in The New York Times of a concert performance of Beethoven's "Fidelio" at Carnegie Hall, Anne Midgette wrote that Ms. Voigt took a while to hit her vocal stride but eventually began "to bloom and shine forth."

In the interview, Ms. Voigt said the Covent Garden episode was double-edged. She was comforted by the good will she felt from fans and a sympathetic public. Still, though the company honored the contract and paid her in full, being fired was humiliating. "I felt like I had to do something drastic," she said. But she had decided to pursue surgery well before the black dress incident. She was experiencing weakness in her knees and worried about developing high blood pressure and diabetes.

"I thought of having this surgery when they started doing it 20 years ago," she said. "But it was an extremely dangerous procedure then, with a high mortality rate."

Paradoxically, Ms. Voigt was long an advocate of the principle that body size does not determine whether an opera singer can be dramatically compelling. Will she now be seen as an artist who caved in to the increasing pressure on singers to look conventionally attractive? Though she insisted that looks were not her primary consideration, she acknowledged that her new body was already benefiting her career.

"I'm doing many more Toscas than I ever thought I would," she said of Puccini's glamorous Roman prima donna. (Some of those "Tosca" performances will be at the Met next season.) And down the road, Ms. Voigt, a renowned Strauss singer, hopes to achieve what she called a "personal triumph" by singing the title role in a production of Strauss's "Salome." She has sung the role only in concert.

The opera's climax is Salome's seductive "Dance of the Seven Veils." Ms. Voigt used to joke that her Salome would have to do the "Dance of the 77 Veils." But now she can't wait to take it on.

Though her excess weight caused her great emotional stress, Ms. Voigt said that her life before the operation was full. "I've had love affairs and a marriage in my life," she said, "and I've never been without some sort of relationship." She has been blessed with loyal fans. "I felt their support and love and admiration 100 pounds heavier," she said. "The great part about this is that I'm going to get to show them something they haven't seen - a different way of moving on stage, a more compelling and believable approach."

The harder part of the adjustment is emotional. "I really still think of myself as a very big woman," she said. "My mind hasn't had the opportunity to catch up with the progress my body has made in a short amount of time."

[A.LaPorta]

The title indicates the author knows nothing of Wagner. Brünnhilde's body is buff.

[dzalman]

The title indicates the author knows nothing of Wagner. Brünnhilde's body is buff.

The author of the article indeed knows nothing of Wagner. But the author of the article is not the author of the headline, who, it's clear, also knows nothing of Wagner.

[Lance]

Well, one has to give Miss Voigt a great deal of credit for taking the bull (or whatever) by the horns and try to do something about it. We'll see what happens with the voice, but she certainly has the right attitude about it all and knows what possibilities exist for vocal changes. In the end, however, she will most likely live a longer life, be less subject to the feared diabetes, have lower blood pressure, and be in generally better health. The emotional side? Sounds like she's on track with that as well. Her 'coming out' with this information will mostly likely help many people who might like to attempt the procedure. I admire her more than ever.

[jbuck919]

The problem with obesity is that it is an almost incurable disorder on an outpatient basis. There are two ways to lose weight: more exercise, and reduced intake of calories. But the body is designed so that muscle is consumed before fat when one takes in fewer calories than one's daily needs. And obese people cannot achieve the level of aerobic exercise needed to burn off fat calories.

This is a situation for hospitalization or at least intensive outpatient treatment. It is a serious medical disorder and cannot be successfully addressed as some sort of self-help thing, and may the writers of all the various diet books rot in hell.

The key passage in the article about Ms. Voigt, which is almost hidden, is that she is a compulsive eater. Hello, folks: all obese people are. It is a myth that heredity has anything to do with this. Compulsive eating, like all harmful addictions, is a reaction to stresses in one's life, in the case of overeating usually loneliness or the self-image of loneliness. We should be sympathetic, because such addictions are actually an alternative to suicide. Many people cannot face the hand they have been dealt, even when it contains three aces with the promise of four.

[Corlyss_D]

So, what's that make her now, 300 lbs, give or take another supermodel?

[dzalman]

The key passage in the article about Ms. Voigt, which is almost hidden, is that she is a compulsive eater. Hello, folks: all obese people are. It is a myth that heredity has anything to do with this.

Heredity may have little (NOT nothing) to do with compulsive eating, but in a number of cases it has a great deal to do with what is perceived as obesity. That some people are "born fat" is becoming a more demonstrable fact with each passing year. Of course, with such people what we see as obese is obese only when measured against the so-called normative values for their age, height, build (i.e., bone structure), etc. Such people are in fact not obese at all. They're what they're genetically determined to be, and any attempt to grossly alter that through excessive dieting and/or surgery will not only fail, but endanger to serious, even lethal, degree the health of such individuals.

[Corlyss_D]

The key passage in the article about Ms. Voigt, which is almost hidden, is that she is a compulsive eater. Hello, folks: all obese people are. It is a myth that heredity has anything to do with this. Compulsive eating, like all harmful addictions, is a reaction to stresses in one's life, in the case of overeating usually loneliness or the self-image of loneliness.

Well, not exactly. It also implicates the chemical composition of the brain and that often is genetics related. They are finding now that overeaters lack a chemical that tells them to stop eating which most of us have. It's more than just lack of will-power.

What I want to know is why so many singers are fat.

[jbuck919]

What I want to know is why so many singers are fat.

I can't speak to the women (God help us if we ever get a male poster who thinks he's figured out women), but it is not such a big deal with the men.

Caruso was not fat at all. He had an endomorphic body type to begin with and his autopsy revealed not an extra ounce of fat on him; he had muscle from New York to Chicago in his abdominal area to support that immense instrument. I strongly suspect that this is true also of many modern tenors.