Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva

by Deborah Voigt

Overview

Internationally beloved opera star Deborah Voigt recounts her harrowing and ultimately successful private battles to overcome the addictions and self-destructive tendencies that nearly destroyed her life.

Call Me Debbie is one of the most electrifying performances of Deborah Voigt’s life. The brilliantly gifted opera soprano takes us behind the velvet curtains to tell her compelling story—a tale of success, addiction, music, and faith as dramatic as any role she has performed. For the first time, she talks about the events that led to her dangerous gastric bypass surgery in 2004 and its shocking aftermath: her substantial weight loss coupled with the “cross addiction” that led to severe alcoholism, frightening all-night blackouts, and suicide attempts. Ultimately, Voigt emerged from the darkness to achieve complete sobriety, thanks to a twelve-step program and a recommitment to her Christian faith.

Colored by hilarious anecdotes and juicy gossip that illuminate what really goes on backstage, Voigt paints diverting portraits of the artists with whom she’s worked, her most memorable moments onstage, and her secrets to great singing. She also offers fascinating insight into the roles she’s played and the characters she loves, including Strauss’s Ariadne and Salome, Puccini’s Minnie, and Wagner’s Sieglinde, Isolde, and Brünnhilde, sharing her intense preparation for playing them.

Filled with eight pages of color photos, Call Me Debbie is an inspirational story that offers a unique look into the life of a modern artist and a remarkable woman.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062118288
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	01/26/2016
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

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. She is also co-creator of Voigt Lessons, a one-woman show she developed with award-winning playwright Terrence McNally and director Francesca Zambello.

Table of Contents

Overture: Heavenly Voices 1

Act I Piccola

1 My Fair Little Lady 7

2 Jesus Loves Me 17

3 Sweet and Innocent 29

4 High School Musical 40

5 Wild Things 52

Act II Accelerando

6 When the Student Is Ready 65

7 Covering Butts 82

8 Next Stop, the Wiener Staatsoper 92

9 Diets and Divas 103

10 Amelia and Ariadne: Luck Be This Lady 117

11 Leona, Leonie, Luciano: Breakthroughs and Breaking Up 133

Act III Crescendo

12 Dangerous Liaisons and Plácido's Kiss 151

13 Blood, Death, and Grace 164

14 Little Black Dress and Sexy Salome 184

15 Princes, Rogues, Blackouts, and Bottoms 204

16 Fathers, Love, and the Ride of the Valkyries 223

17 Fear and Loathing in Liège 238

18 A Tree of Life 247

Finale: Voigt Lessons 259

Editorial Reviews

…a startlingly frank look at the life of one of her generation’s most prominent operatic stars.

Lisa Ko

’Call Me Debbie’ is quite a page turner.

Buffalo News

’Call Me Debbie’ is quite a page turner.” %COMM_CONTRIB%Buffalo News

01/01/2015
The upfront title sets the genial tone for this frank and confessional biography. Throughout, opera singer Voigt (b. 1960), a self-professed antidiva, maintains a no-holds-barred conversational tone, with a healthy dose of humor—one highlight: a jinxed production of Tristan und Isolde—and infused with her Christian faith. She delivers plenty of dish, from the bizarre antics of Mezzo X and Mezzo Y to her self-lacerating low self-esteem and addictions to food, men (distant and temperamental ones), and alcohol. One weight-loss attempt involved the injection of women's urine—she kids you not. Voigt eventually shed, and kept off, more than 100 pounds through gastric bypass surgery. Not surprising given her career, the singer is prone to high drama. Regarding an abusive boyfriend (and pot farmer): "He was a criminal and I was his willing prisoner." She's equally fluent in therapy-speak, having recently completed a rehab stint in 2013. VERDICT There's plenty here to captivate those who have followed the opera scene; the book also serves as an accessible entry to the world of Richard Wagner and Giacomo Puccini. Multimedia collections should also keep on hand the behind-the-scenes 2012 documentary Wagner's Dream, about the Metropolitan Opera's recent Ring cycle, starring the soprano in her prime. Viewers witness her slipping onstage and then nimbly recovering, which is one of the disarming anecdotes recounted here. [See Prepub Alert, 7/7/14.]—Kent Turner, School Library Journal

Library Journal