By Janelle Gelfand
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Deborah Voigt performs at the Schuster Center in Dayton in April. Voigt will perform at Music Hall on Saturday as part of the May Festival. The Cincinnati Enquirer/CRAIG RUTTLE

DAYTON - The first thing you notice when meeting opera diva Deborah Voigt - aside from her striking sapphire-blue eyes - is that she looks a lot like the average American. You'd never guess there was an international media firestorm surrounding her plus-size dress.

"The affair of the little black dress" has become the hottest topic in the classical music world. Voigt, one of the world's most superb dramatic sopranos, was dismissed a few weeks ago by London's Royal Opera from her signature role in Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. The reason cited was that she couldn't fit into the cocktail dress for the updated production.

The news flew around the world faster than Donald Trump can say "you're fired!"

"I never dreamt it would be international news and show up on CNN, for God's sake," says Voigt, who performs another favorite role - Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walkure - Saturday with the Cincinnati May Festival.

"On the other hand, it doesn't surprise me, because, especially in the U.S., it resonated with people who are dealing with this problem. People think, well aren't (opera singers) supposed to be big? No we're not, but many of us have been."

IF YOU GO

What: Soprano Deborah Voigt performs Wagner's Act I from Die Walkure. James Conlon conducts the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. When: 8 p.m. Saturday Where: Music Hall, 1241 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine Cost: $11-$62 for single-performance tickets Information: 381-3300 or www.mayfestival.com Coming Friday: Interview with May Festival maestro James Conlon, in Weekend

Voigt was revisiting the incident the day after giving a magnificent recital in Dayton's Schuster Center last month, wowing her fans with five encores and a glamorous costume change to a flirtatious, feathered creation. She looked fresh - even though post-concert adrenaline kept her awake until 2:30 a.m.

Apologetic that she was running late for lunch - she'd had a family emergency - the 43-year-old singer says it was hard to squeeze in her personal life with her thriving opera schedule, which has her booked solid until 2010. When she flies in for the May Festival, it will be two days after singing Isolde (Tristan und Isolde) in Vienna, where her 23-minute ovation on opening night last May has already become the stuff of opera legend.

"I'm only doing it as a favor to James (Conlon) because James and I go way back, and he has been so good to me," she says, referring to the May Festival music director, who is celebrating his 25th season in that role. "The first operatic recording I ever made was with James, of Oberon."

A "cover" singer will be at the rehearsals in Cincinnati before Voigt's arrival.

"I don't envy her - I remember those days, doing all the work and in flies the diva, and they don't remember your name," she says, laughing.

Dressed in pinstriped black slacks, a red blouse and a modish black and silver necklace, Voigt, a native of Wheeling, Ill., was relaxed and instantly likable. Although she's recognized as "the greatest living interpreter of the dramatic heroines of Wagner and Richard Strauss," (MusicalAmerica.com), this was no "diva."

But after Cincinnati, she'll have six weeks of paid vacation, courtesy of the Royal Opera House - "not all bad," she notes, ruefully. She'll use the time to catch up with her family during her brother's wedding, planned to take place on her private beach in Vero Beach, Fla.

Diets didn't really work

She brought up the Atkins Diet as she opened her menu, and ordered the fruit plate. She's struggled with weight since childhood, and has tried several diets.

"There's not much that I haven't tried, frankly. It (Atkins) made me pretty nauseous most of the time. It's just too rich."

Her weight, she says, "is part of who I am. I walked around for a long time having a chip on my shoulder, feeling like it shouldn't matter. And it shouldn't. Well, it does."

Admitting she was hurt and angry, she adds: "I made my Covent Garden debut with Luciano (Pavarotti). He was never fired for being too heavy."

The news about the dress imbroglio came out in an interview in March, when a writer asked why she was not singing in the production. Reporters tracked her down in a little hotel in Geneva - first BBC Radio and then People magazine, which even called her seamstress in New York and the Metropolitan Opera's costume shop to get her measurements.

"I thought, 'How in the hell are they getting my phone number?' " she says. She switched on the television, saw a Beatles tribute and decided to change her name on the hotel manifest.

"I was Mrs. George Harrison for a few days," she laughs.

Yet, the black dress fiasco exploded during an astonishing run. Voigt was Musical America's 2003 Vocalist of the Year, and was the first American singer honored with a new production at Vienna State Opera (Tristan und Isolde). In her 12th season at the Met, she has triumphed this year in Strauss' Die Frau Ohne Schatten and Wagner's Die Walkure.

Last year, she starred in a Broadway benefit for Classical Action and Broadway Cares/ Equity fights AIDS. In April, she made her Carnegie Hall recital debut, and her first solo album, Obsessions - opera arias and scenes by Wagner and Strauss - was released to stellar reviews.

"Yeah, it's been a big one, no question about it. Yet on a personal level, it's been a rough year," she notes. "It makes having personal relationships or even friendships, or relationships with your family - really difficult."

The glitz and glamour of the opera stage can be lonely. Her stepsister died last spring of a rare form of cancer, just before Voigt opened in Tristan und Isolde, and she couldn't be with her family.

One of the casualties of her career was her marriage. Now divorced, her Yorkshire terrier, Steinway, keeps her company on tour - along with her laptop. She has no homes other than her condo in Vero Beach.

"I tend to stay in a lot of Placido's apartments (that's opera star Placido Domingo, her leading man in the Met's Die Walkure)," she says. "He owns apartments in every major city."

Voigt is singing at her peak - with a gleaming, powerful voice, that could, says Musical America, "light a good-sized city." She's just announced that she'll debut a new role: the Marschallin in Strauss' Der Rosenkavelier, in Vancouver, followed by Berlin and Vienna.

After that come La Gioconda ("I love that verismo stuff") and eventually, the warrior maiden Brunnhilde in Die Walkure. She attempted a few of Brunnhilde's lusty "Ho-jo-to-ho!" battle cries in her recital.

"But if you do (Brunnhilde) too soon, you're going to be pigeonholed, because there are so few of those kinds of singers. So it was really important to me to try and put off those things as long as possible," she says.

There'll always be Broadway

Then there's Broadway. Her Broadway selections brought down the house in Dayton. Eventually, she plans an album. But first, she's planning Voigt in Vienna, a disc of turn-of-the-century Viennese bon-bons.

"This crossover thing is going well, and the record company's saying, 'well, maybe we should go in that direction,'" she says.

The waiter puts an enormous cup of cappuccino in front of her. "Oh, here's a soup of cappuccino." She laughs.

How long will she keep up the pace?

"When I hear people yelling out, 'I love you Debbie!' from the balcony, they're seeing something that they're keying into," she says, referring to a fan's cry the night before.

"It would be really easy at this point in my career to say, I'm going to do these six roles and sing these two recital programs. And that's all I'm going to do until the end of it.

"But I feel a greater responsibility than that. I've been given this great gift. And I have to try to do something with it."

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com