I said goodbye to my parents and my childhood the best way I knew how—in song. Just before John and I took off, I sang at two weddings in the space of one week—strangely enough, for both of my parents. Mom had met Tim, a warehouse worker, at our church, and Dad had proposed to his secretary, Lynn. Dad got married on a Friday night in Newport Beach and had a reception at one of those eighteenth-century-themed restaurants with waitresses dressed as wenches; Mom got married at her new home in East Anaheim the following Saturday. I couldn’t help but feel it was a race between them—I’ll show you, I’ll get married, too!
For Dad and his new wife, I sang Karen Carpenter’s “We’ve Only Just Begun”; for Mom and her new husband, I sang “The Lord’s Prayer.” It was strange for me to be singing at my parents’ weddings to other people. At the time, I didn’t feel so ready to embrace these newcomers into the family. (Later, Lynn and I would become very close.) But I knew it was a time for changes and moving on, for me and for my parents, and that we all needed fresh starts with new people and new surroundings.
This time, leaving home was easy. I was stronger and had a definite path, and I wasn’t doing it alone. After the weddings, I didn’t stay around long for any encores—I was eager to get on my new road.
Leaving Jane, on the other hand, was emotional for both of us. Even though I planned to come back every few months to see her and continue our sessions when we could, we hugged goodbye in the driveway outside her house as John waited for me in the car, and we had one of our little cries. And just for old time’s sake, I gave Jane a farewell dose of my classic low self-esteem rant, lest she miss it while I was gone.
“Jane, I don’t know if I can do this . . . if I’ll ever amount to anything.”
“Be patient, Debbie. Have faith. Even if you don’t know it, I’ve known it all along—you have it in you to do it.”
Jane believed in me. The big question was, did I believe in me? John and I took off and drove north on Interstate 5, toward my future, whatever it might be.
( 7 )
Covering Butts
ONCE I ARRIVED in San Francisco, there was no turning back—my road was clear and I was moving forward with a single purpose: I was going to be an opera singer.
The next few years would consist of intense coaching in movement, acting, breath work, musical style, and role preparation . . . followed by four months touring the country on a Greyhound bus with my fellow apprentices . . . then two years studying small roles and understudying seven major operatic roles, including Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Lisa in Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame, Amelia in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, and Leonora in Verdi’s Il trovatore.
For the first time in my life, I was supporting myself fully with music. The company gave me a yearly salary of $35,000 and John found a job at a local Good Guys, selling electronics. We rented a little one-bedroom apartment on Franklin Street, two blocks from the opera house and in the heart of downtown San Francisco, sandwiched between City Hall and the Courthouse. It didn’t occur to us to go to that Courthouse next door and get married—we planned to live in sin for a while and see where it took us.
SOME OF THE most invaluable roles for a young opera-singer-in-training are the ones that you understudy. In opera, we call understudies “covers”—I’m not sure why. I liked to call them the “cover your butts,” and I covered many a well-sized butt in my early days (and later on, had my own butt covered).
I understudied for top sopranos like Leontyne Price, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Jessye Norman—the great divas of the era, because I sang in the same “fach” as they did. Fach is a German word meaning “compartment,” and in the opera world we use it as a way to categorize voices. A singer’s fach is his or her comfort zone, the place where one naturally belongs on the spectrum from bass baritone to coloratura soprano, the vocal range where one’s voice is most natural, expressive, and powerful without strain.
Starting out in San Francisco, I was a “spinto” soprano, which meant I could push my voice (“spinto” means “pushed” in Italian) to reach large, dramatic climaxes. Jane Paul and I did a lot of work on strengthening my upper register when I was her student.
From there, the natural progression of my voice over time would grow and mature to being a “jugendlich-dramatischer” (a young dramatic soprano), and then, finally, a dramatic soprano, which is my category today, where I sing over big orchestras and perform roles of soaring gravitas.
Covering a lead role is both exhilarating and frustrating. To an opera singer trying to break into the scene, performing a coveted role in a major opera house could ignite one’s career; all it takes is a sniffle coming from the leading lady’s dressing room. But more often than not it’s frustrating. You can sit in “the house” for hours and hours every day for the entire run of an opera, watching the person you are understudying rehearse and perform, and never get onstage to sing those arias yourself. It’s tedious and exasperating because, as a singer, you have to have a certain amount of ego to start with (to my parents’ dismay) and believe you can do the role. Sometimes, you even believe you can do it better than the person who’s up there (and in some cases that may be true).
Sometimes you get so close to going on—you’re wearing the big gown, the big wig, the big makeup—that you can taste it. But then . . .
One of my first big “cover” assignments was to understudy Welsh soprano Dame Margaret Price, who was then very famous and poised to star as Amelia in Un ballo in maschera at the San Francisco Opera House.
It was several weeks before my cover assignment was to begin. I was on a bus at the time, traveling somewhere from Biloxi, Mississippi, to Wichita, Kansas: two dozen of us were on tour going from town to town with our production of Don Giovanni.
Twice a week, four singers in the group also performed “An Hour for the Opera” and did early-morning opera “variety” shows for schoolchildren before their classes began. Those were tough, because we had to get up at six a.m., often after being up late the night before with a show, and sleepwalk our way through costume and makeup while trying to find something to eat that the guys in the bus hadn’t already gotten to. We all bitched and groaned because we were tired and not getting paid extra for it, but once we got onstage we loved it! The children, ranging in age from five to ten, would rush up and lean on the edge of the stage with their elbows, looking up at us with their little faces and eyes as big as saucers.
They were the best audiences ever, laughing out loud and clapping and shrieking when my character, Carmen, had a spat with Madame Butterfly. We really hammed it up for them, and sometimes it was hard for us to maintain our composure, especially when a little kid would be up front picking his nose when we’d barely digested our morning cereal. We were in small, small towns, in run-down little schools—I remember one was a paper-mill town with a population of 2,000—and these kids had never, ever seen anything remotely like these opera characters clowning around like crazy for them.
Life on the road was a kind of opera bootcamp. Some nights I sang the lead of Donna Anna, and on other nights I sang in the chorus. It was rigorous work, and we were a young, talented, driven-for-success, rowdy bunch. We learned how to get along with our colleagues on a day-to-day basis, we learned how to stay healthy on a bus where if one person got sick we all did (especially when there were late-night romances going on). Hours on the bus every day gave us “bus butt” and “bus hair” and “bus cramps,” and we complained about it and laughed about it and endured it. But back to Ms. Price.
We had already been on the bus for several weeks when I got a panicked message from the opera house. Rehearsals hadn’t even begun yet, but she was ill and had canceled. They were looking to replace her for the entire run. As her official cover, I was in the running.
“Get off the bus right away,” the message said, “and get to the nearest airport and fly back to San Francisco. We want you to audition for the head of the theater and the conductor. We need to see if yo
u are ready to take over this role on the main stage.”
Ready? I was twenty-five, which was pretty young to be put onstage in such a big part. And not for one or two nights, for the entire run!
I flew back and went straight to the opera house from the airport for the audition, a chance-of-a-lifetime role for a green ingénue. I had already begun learning the role of Amelia, but because rehearsals hadn’t started yet I wasn’t scheduled to be back in San Francisco for quite a while so I wasn’t “off book” yet—I didn’t have it memorized. I did the audition with the music stand in front of me—which is the first clue that someone probably isn’t so ready to take on a major opera lead!
I sang the aria from Act II, “Ecco l’orrido campo,” and then approached the moment in the aria called an “unaccompanied cadenza,” which is basically a florid without any instruments, it’s just you singing notes a capella. I had to pluck the notes out of the air and sing them. Just as I was about to do that, the tenor in the show that evening began warming up in his dressing room, which was just offstage. As soon as I heard him, I lost all sense of pitch and could not figure out what note I was on. The theater manager and the conductor had no idea what was happening, since they couldn’t hear the tenor from where they were sitting. All they knew was, I was not good. I blew it. I heard a quiet, disembodied voice from the dark:
“Thank you, Debbie.”
The artistic manager met me in the wings as I came offstage to tell me I wasn’t ready to do the entire run, but that they wanted me to continue being the cover. I thanked them, and got my own well-sized butt back on the Greyhound bus with the other hopefuls until it was time to return and begin my covering-butt duties. Of course, in retrospect, they were absolutely right. Even if I hadn’t had the mishap with the rehearsing tenor, I was no more ready to do that part onstage than I was to fly to the moon.
They chose soprano Carol Neblett to take Ms. Price’s place, and I got back onto solid ground for rehearsals at the company, falling more and more in love with the role as I rehearsed it, and wanting so much to play it onstage.
Then, another chance for my “big break” came. One morning I got a phone call:
“Ms. Neblett isn’t feeling well, so you’re on call this evening if she needs to cancel. Be at the theater by five p.m. for hair and makeup.”
I called up my mom with the news, and she and my newest stepdad, Don, jumped into the car and sped the six hours from Placentia to San Francisco. (Don was Mom’s third husband. For their wedding, I sang a recycled, encore version of “The Lord’s Prayer.” I’m happy to say, the third time was the charm for her. Don was a kind teddy bear of a guy and proved to be Mom’s Prince Charming. The whole family fell in love with him.) A half an hour before the curtain was to go up, they were in their seats as I sat in front of the mirror in a tiny dressing room with wig and face done, ready to go on. Waiting to hear. Tick-tock, tick-tock. I hear a knock on my dressing room door.
“Debbie, Ms. Neblett would like to speak with you.”
Fuck. What does that mean?
I go down the hall to her dressing room and tap on her door. It opens to reveal three cool, menthol vaporizers blowing at full speed, plus a row of medicines—antihistamines, decongestants, aspirin—lined up in front of her makeup mirror. She turns around and stares at me.
“Why are you in costume and makeup?”
“Well, Ms. Neblett, I’m on call. They told me that you were ill. I’m just here to cover for you and protect you in the eventuality that you feel you can’t go on.”
She smiled a very polite smile, but her eyes were not smiling. In a very calm voice, she said, “Oh, that’s very nice.”
I was excused from the room ten minutes before the curtain went up, and you’ve never seen such a miraculous healing take place. It was like all the vapors in the room suddenly evaporated and the medicines disappeared and she went out on that stage and sang like a goddess—you would’ve never known that she was ill. No, I never got onstage in that production. And since that day I’ve always maintained that if you want to get your diva out onstage, send in her cover. Or make sure the diva can hear her cover warming up somewhere backstage.
I had a lot of experiences like that, where I’m either understudying or singing opposite divas who say, “I’m sick, I’m sick, I’m sick,” and then they don’t cancel. I think that’s why I’m particularly sensitive to that situation. If I have my cover called in, it’s because I’m really sick.
When I was starting out, the cover wouldn’t be in the regular rehearsal room with the star. You didn’t see your cover until you were onstage and she was in the audience—because a cover always has to be within twenty minutes of the opera house during a performance, in case they are needed. Today, the cover is sitting in the room while you are staging—and it drives me crazy. Sometimes these women have understudied roles several times that I’m just learning, and they are not subtle about showing that they know the words when I don’t yet, mouthing them during rehearsal as I sing.
When I was doing Puccini’s La fanciulla del West in San Francisco in 2011, I was learning the role of Minnie for the first time, and I was struggling with the text, as usual. So I kept looking over at my cover across the room because she was mouthing the words; little did she know it, but she was acting as my live prompter! When she realized that’s what I was doing, she shut her mouth pretty darn fast.
ANOTHER TIME, I was called in to take the place of a Canadian soprano who was singing Leonora in Il trovatore, which I was understudying for the San Francisco Opera. The soprano, whose name I can’t recall, had a sudden throat problem and they needed me that same night in Victoria, British Columbia. I knew I could get there, but I also knew there was no way her costumes would fit me—I had seen a photo of their soprano and she was tall and lean. I called up friends in the costume shop in San Francisco and arranged to borrow a bunch of costumes that already fit me, packed them in several suitcases, and made it across the country to the customs counter at the airport in Victoria where Canadian officials stopped me. They opened up my suitcase and pulled out what were obviously not street clothes.
“What are these for?” asked a very stern customs official. I had made the mistake of saying on my declaration card that I was coming over the border for work, not thinking it would be a problem. I was delayed for hours. By the time I left the airport it was 7:15 p.m., and I was zooming toward the opera house for the eight-o’clock curtain. When I pulled up, at 7:45 p.m., the house manager was pacing up and down in front of the theater.
“We don’t have time to get you changed and put you onstage,” he said, rushing me backstage, running, “so you’re going to sing from the pit and (the other soprano) will lip-sync from the stage.”
I was wearing the worst thing possible for the pit—a billowy white dress with puffy sleeves and bright geometric shapes all over it, completely distracting for the audience. But the show had to go on. I sang through it and we got rousing applause; the next morning I was on a plane back to California.
WHEN I DID get onstage, or when we rehearsed, I immersed myself in my role and loved the acting part of the profession. Some singers only love the singing, but I love the whole package—as was evident from when I was a little girl playing dress-up and playing pretend before I could barely talk. When I sit in a dressing room and see myself become a character in the mirror, as the hair is done up and the makeup applied and the costume put on, I love it. During my years in San Francisco, I could see my abilities as an actress stretch and strengthen.
I was gratified to know that even though I was big, what they valued in me in San Francisco was my talent and my presence onstage. They saw that I could walk onto a stage and make immediate emotional contact with an audience—as Jane Paul said, that came naturally to me, I was born with it.
The head of the Young Artist Program in San Francisco at the time, Christine Bullin, was a great supporter and encourager of young talent, and I was scared to death of her, but I held on to somethin
g she once said to me. She told me why she and conductor Andrew Meltzer took a chance on me for their program when the New York Met did not.
“You have the pipes,” she said. “You have a voice that has quality and tone. You have an identifiable sound.”
Because of the nature of the genre, opera singers tend to sound similar to each other. What lifts you a notch above the others is if your voice is identifiable—unique—among the chorus of others. When they heard me singing at my audition, I had “a Deborah Voigt sound” that was my own, and that’s what they latched on to.
STILL, I WORRIED that the more weight I gained, the less evident my acting would be to an audience or a director. When you look at someone whose face is buried in fat, which mine was because I tend to carry weight in my face, and it was getting bigger and bigger, expressions don’t read as clearly—especially on a big stage. That’s why in my heavier days the makeup artists used to try to “paint on” features for me by shading and contouring the sides and underneath my face.
Another obstacle for an audience when watching a very, very big (read: obese) person onstage is the stereotypes they must confront, whether they are conscious of it or not. I think when people see a big, fat person, they automatically assume the person can’t move well and, even worse, that nobody could possibly love them in a romantic way. In other words, how can a three-hundred-pound woman play the romantic role of Aida if the audience doesn’t believe the tenor onstage would find her attractive?
Near the end of my first year in San Francisco, my father came to visit, and, per family tradition, we had a snippet of intense conversation while driving in the car. I had just started some new diet and was explaining the measuring and caloric specifics to him as he drove. His eyes were on the road when out of the blue he said:
“Debbie, I feel so bad and guilty that I contributed to your gaining weight. And I’m sorry for anything that I did that might be the reason for it. I want you to lose this weight. Please, lose this weight.”
Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva Page 8