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

by Deborah Voigt

  I was out of my league when it came to riches and baubles. At the black-tie dinner later that evening, I sat next to a very tanned Greek yacht designer who was designing a boat for director Steven Spielberg. He looked like Ari Onassis, and his wife who was sitting across from me, upstaged even Camilla with the biggest, most sparkling canary diamond necklace I’d ever seen.

  “That’s a beautiful necklace on your wife,” I said. I pushed away flashbacks of Mitch, ripping my own humble diamond from my neck.

  “Yes,” the tanned, Greek yacht designer said, nodding emphatically. “It’s so difficult to find good jewelry these days, don’t you agree?”

  “Oh, yes . . . yes,” I said, clutching the modest Macy’s knock-off I wore at my own throat.

  The flowers and table settings were gorgeous—each place card calligraphically handwritten. And leave it to the British tradition of service to have succeeded in serving two hundred guests an appetizer that included a perfectly poached egg. How in the world do you time that?

  After dinner, I mingled a bit and talked to Natasha Richardson, who was beautiful and warm. (Nine months later, I’d be stunned to hear the news of her death following a tumble during a skiing lesson.) All of a sudden, the room went silent and everyone stood up and began leaving the room in waves.

  “Time for us to go,” Natasha whispered, grabbing her purse and signaling Liam. Sure enough, two palace pages were making their way from one end of the room to the other, telling people to leave. The prince was leaving, and that meant we had to as well.

  As Peter and I went down the stairs to leave, we bumped into Joan Rivers. I was a big fan of hers and told her so.

  “And we have something in common,” I added. “I have a Yorkie, too. Isn’t it a shame we couldn’t bring them to London because of the quarantine?”

  “Thank you for reminding me . . . you bitch!” she said, very loudly. I stood on the staircase with my mouth open. I guess even St. James’s Palace wasn’t too sacred a place for Joan’s jabs. I hope the angels have a sense of humor.

  Despite being sworn at by a big star, it was a dazzling, sparkling night, and Ariadne had been a success. So I should have been happy, right? But I wasn’t. The newspapers praised my comeback performance and my pretty face and figure. But when I looked in the bathroom mirror after we returned to our hotel suite that night, all I saw was the sad, bloated face of another addiction that had replaced the old one.

  That night, I woke up at four a.m. in a panic. Peter was sleeping peacefully, and I shook him awake.

  “I’m so afraid, Peter.” I clung to him.

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know, I can’t define it. Aren’t you ever afraid?”

  “No,” he said, with a yawn. “I don’t have anything to be afraid of. My Lord tells me not to be fearful.”

  That kind of blind faith makes life so much easier, and I wish to God I had it.

  BACK HOME IN New York, everyone at the Met was getting ready for Plácido’s fortieth anniversary with the company. General Manager Peter Gelb, who took over for Joe Volpe two years earlier, was planning a black-tie soirée to happen right on the Met’s stage. Mr. Gelb also had a funny, sexy idea to kick-start the evening, and it involved me.

  His plan was for José Carreras, the other third of the Three Tenors, to begin the night with an adoring speech about Plácido and our late friend, Luciano Pavarotti. But, as Carreras told the guests with a wink, perhaps it was time to pass the baton over to new talent and new tenors.

  That was the cue for the black curtain on the stage to part, and as the orchestra played the opening bars of Puccini’s “Nessun dorma” from Turandot, my fellow powerhouse singers Susan Graham, Pat Racette, and I appeared dressed up as the Tenors in tuxedos and tails. The party guests went wild. Our tuxedos had strings in back that were intricately rigged so that our costumes would “break away” with a tug. As the aria rose to a crescendo, someone above us pulled a few strings and yanked the suits off our bodies to reveal us wearing sparkly, skintight Dreamgirls gowns—me in turquoise, Susan in red, and Pat in blue. Everyone cheered!

  Plácido sat a few feet from us, clapping and laughing . . . as we then went into our rendition of the Gilbert & Sullivan hit from The Mikado:

  Three little maids from school are we

  Pert as a school-girl well can be

  Filled to the brim with girlish glee

  Three little maids from school . . .

  All three of us were natural hambones and we played it to the hilt. Then we each took turns singing excerpts from the operas we’d done with Plácido, ending our show with a reprise of “Nessun dorma”—and this time the three of us belted it out—that had Plácido in tears. At the after-party up onstage, Plácido hugged me tightly:

  “Debbie! It was so funny, you were the Three Tenors and then suddenly these Dreamgirls!”

  We’d come a long way from our “first kiss” twelve years earlier, Plácido and I had. And I was proud not only to call him my illustrious colleague, but now, also, my friend.

  IT WAS YET another spectacular night of special nights, and I’ve had many of them over the years. But the higher we fly, the harder we fall. And after that night, I went down. It was like falling off a balcony in slow motion.

  My alcohol intake reached an all-time high in the second half of 2008. When I wasn’t working, I was drinking. On days off I started the moment I woke up with vodka and orange juice and just kept going until I passed out. On performance days, I didn’t touch a drop until the work was over. But as soon as I arrived home I’d rush straight to the kitchen without taking my coat off and pour a big glass of wine and chug it as quickly as possible. I wasn’t drinking for pleasure at all anymore; I was drinking to get as drunk as possible as fast as possible. I had three different liquor stores on speed dial and I’d rotate them when I called for delivery so they wouldn’t think I was ordering so much. Sometimes when I called, I pretended I was ordering for a party.

  I was so miserable, I must have been miserable to be around. I have a dim, heartbreaking, regretful memory of playing with Steinway one drunken morning and pulling on his whiskers too hard. He yelped in pain and to remember it brings me to tears. My Steiny must have been wondering, What is happening to Mama?

  By November, my slow-motion free fall was gaining momentum.

  I was in Vienna to sing Salome at the Wiener Staatsoper and Peter was supposed to meet me there. I’d bought him a plane ticket and got us a plush, expensive hotel suite so we could have a romantic time. I was waiting for him to call from the airport to let me know he was boarding, but I didn’t hear from him. A few frantic hours later, as his flight was over the Atlantic I called his cell again and he picked up. He was still in New York. He’d never even gotten on the plane and hadn’t bothered to tell me.

  What mature person—and a so-called Christian to boot—does that to someone they supposedly love? His actions should have answered that question for me, but I didn’t want to face that reality.

  On a dreary, cold Sunday, Jesslyn and I slipped into the gothic St. Stephen’s Cathedral and went to mass. We were shivering cold in a back pew, and the mass was in German so we barely understood a word, but I didn’t care. The church bells tolled, and they tolled for me—I needed God, so badly

  By Christmas, I’d forgiven Peter again and we visited his family in Florida for the holidays. I was determined to be on my best behavior—I didn’t touch a drop of drink for the three-day visit even though it put me in severe withdrawal. I wanted to make a good impression on his family because I still, stupidly, hoped for a future with Peter. He had told me when we met that he never dated a woman he wouldn’t consider marrying, and that thought kept me on a string. We had a nice Christmas Eve dinner with his parents at their home, and I was feeling pretty good until I noticed an elaborately framed photo of Peter with Prince Charles displayed proudly in the living room—the one and only photo taken that evening that didn’t include yours truly in the frame.

  Pe
ter and I got into an argument in the car on the way back to the hotel. He was only dropping me off, by the way, he wasn’t staying with me—he was still in denial that we even had sex (which we did) and he knew his parents wouldn’t think it proper if he stayed with me.

  As we drove, Peter was boasting about how he intended to buy houses for his parents and his sister and take care of all his loved ones.

  When he stopped in front of my hotel, I was ready to burst into tears.

  “Peter, I don’t understand what’s going on here. You tell me you’re open to marriage or a permanent relationship, and yet you’re constantly talking about buying homes for your parents, your brother, your sister . . . but what about you and me? Where do I fit in? I want a partner. I feel like we’re not on the same page. If you’re not serious about me, you need to let me go.”

  He remained silent, and I got out of the car and slammed the door. We had plans to meet in New York for New Year’s after he visited a friend outside of Nashville, but I couldn’t get hold of him in the days following Christmas. I called, left messages, and filled up his voice mail. Frantic to reach him, I found the number for the friend he was visiting.

  “Hi, I’m so sorry to bother you, but I’m trying to find Peter. . . .” I’d reached the friend’s mother. Funnily enough (though I wasn’t laughing), the mother had the same name as an iconic Wagnerian heroine.

  “Oh, he’s not here, dear,” she said. “They all got in the car and drove to Nashville for New Year’s Eve.”

  And still I forgave him. To make it up to me, he promised to visit me on Valentine’s Day 2009 in Chicago, where I’d be singing about love potions and poisons in Tristan und Isolde. I made romantic plans for us once again—reservations at the best restaurant, tickets to a sold-out performance of the hottest play in town, and a sexy new negligee. I even got Valentine’s Day treats for Steinway, whom I’d brought to keep me company during the run. Poor Steiny. Who knows how many times during those years he bore the brunt of my unhinging world—and sometimes the blame. One morning after a night of heavy drinking and debauchery in Chicago, I woke up in my rented apartment to find it looking like a rock band had trashed the place—spilled booze, smashed wineglasses, food smeared into the carpet, furniture upside down. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but you get the picture.

  “Steinway!” I scolded him, “what did you do?!”

  Only an alcoholic could blame a six-pound dog for such mass destruction.

  Two days before Valentine’s Day, Peter telephoned.

  “I don’t think I can come. I haven’t got my paycheck yet and I don’t have the money for the plane ticket.” Was this the same man who was buying houses for his entire family?

  “Peter, I’m not going to let a cheap airplane ticket get in the way of our lovely Valentine’s Day plans. I’ll buy your ticket. You can pay me back, or consider it a Valentine’s gift.”

  He was silent. “Debbie. I don’t think it’s a good idea.” He continued to say that we were indeed “not in the same place,” as I had said in the car at Christmas, and that he wasn’t coming to be with me and that it was over between us.

  I hung up the phone, aghast. I had told him to tell me if he wasn’t serious about me and had urged him to let me go if he wasn’t. And now that he had, I couldn’t handle it. The reality was too painful. I needed to do whatever it took not to feel the black hopelessness that began gripping me like a tight fist. I went downstairs to the grocery store and bought six bottles of cheap white wine, went back up to my apartment, and drank until I passed out.

  At some point after my Valentine’s Day heart massacre, I made a few drunken phone calls. One was to Jesslyn.

  “I have a bottle of Xanax and a bottle of Ambien,” I told her, sobbing. “I’m going to swallow them and jump off the balcony. Please, please,” I begged her, “come and get Steinway after I’m gone and give him a good home.”

  ( 16 )

  Fathers, Love, and the Ride of the Valkyries

  UNLIKE TOSCA, BUT very much like Debbie, I didn’t take the leap.

  After calling Jesslyn, I passed out before taking even one pill. But my suicidal phone call set off a chain of events that had my family jumping in cars and boarding planes to get to me. Jesslyn called my brothers, who called a family relative who lived nearby. I don’t know how many minutes later it was that Cousin Tony showed up at my apartment. In that time I had woken from my stupor, gone downstairs to buy more booze, and returned to find him banging on the door.

  “Tony? What are you doing here?”

  “Hi, Deb,” he said, eyeing the paper bag still in my arms. “I came by to see how you were doing.” He slowly reached toward my bag, careful not to make any quick movements.

  “Here, let me take that for you. How are you feeling?” He talked soothingly as he got me inside.

  “To tell you the truth, Tony, I’m not feeling so good.”

  Once inside, I passed out again. I have a vague, discombobulated memory of hearing voices. First there was Tony, saying to someone on the phone, maybe it was 911,“Yeah, I’ve got the pills. There’s all different kinds here. . . . She says she didn’t take any. . . . Yeah, I’ll get rid of the booze. . . .” I remember waking up some time later and seeing my sister-in-law, Angie, Rob’s wife—they lived in Atlanta—sitting next to my bed, watching me anxiously. I remember hearing Kevin’s voice talking on the phone, saying, “It would be best if you didn’t call Debbie anymore, Peter. Leave her alone.”

  My mother and Don arrived the next day, and Mom was devastated. She hugged me and cried and kept saying, “I can’t believe my little girl would want to kill herself.” I tried to explain to her that I didn’t—not really, and that I was so drunk I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought to ask her about when I was sixteen and she herself had phoned my father late at night crying, with a bottle of sleeping pills next to her. Had she wanted to harm herself? Mom didn’t take the leap then, either. Like mother like daughter, as Dad would say. But I didn’t have the energy to go there, and I didn’t want to upset her by bringing it up.

  Amazingly, I managed to pull myself together and sing the next night, and sing well. Actually, it wasn’t that difficult. I had a good, reliable technique, and I focused on that instead of how I was feeling physically or emotionally—which I always tried to keep separate from my performances. That’s how I usually worked, and it pulled me through just about anything. Maybe this time I let a little bit of heartache seep through during the final act. Because there’s nothing like using a little real life-and-death drama of one’s own to add extra oomph to that “Liebestod” when Isolde surrenders to death.

  Despite my drinking and heartache (or maybe because of it?) the critics gave me good reviews. From the Chicago Tribune:

  LYRIC OPERA’S “TRISTAN” A TRIUMPH FOR THE

  SHINING ISOLDE OF DEBORAH VOIGT

  . . . Voigt threw herself into a vocally fearless, dramatically incisive portrayal of the proud Irish princess who engages in a passionate affair with the knight Tristan that eventually consumes both of them.

  She made the “Liebestod” a gripping song of transcendence; as the orchestra surged, Isolde surrendered to death, standing transfixed under a single spotlight, surrounded by a darkened stage. Voigt and [tenor Clifton] Forbis were at their best in the long, ecstatic love duet (here slightly cut) in which Tristan and Isolde poured out their longing for the bliss of eternal night.

  Mom and Don stayed with me for two weeks, during which Mom cooked comfort food from my childhood. On my days off, we went to movies and out to dinner. I couldn’t stop crying. I felt like I’d hurt everyone so much, let alone what I’d done to myself. I was ashamed that I was not what they all thought I was—that I was not the strong, sunny, happy Debbie they expected and wanted. People, even my family, often look at my life and think, “Oh wow, how fabulous, how fantastic,” and don’t think there can be a sad side to it. My old publicist, Herbert Breslin, who had urged me to present a darker, more complicated image
to the public instead of being so “sunny,” would have eaten this stuff up. He would have been sending out press releases.

  “What you need, kid,” he used to say, “is a good scandal.”

  I found a therapist to speak to in Chicago, and she laid out the situation clearly:

  “You can go to rehab or you can go to AA or,” she said, “you can slowly kill yourself. Or, you can quickly kill yourself. What are you going to do?”

  I didn’t have time to go to rehab, and I wasn’t even sure I believed in it. So I took the AA route, determined to take my commitment seriously. The meetings had helped in the past—I had several sober months under my belt when I met Peter. But with all my traveling I had begun to skip them, and then stopped all together, which was not good.

  “You forget you have a disease,” said the chairperson of a meeting I went to in Chicago. “You start to think you don’t need the meetings. It’s a disease that doesn’t want you to believe you have a disease. It’s a disease that wants you dead. Don’t forget, ‘meeting makers make it.’”

  I admitted (again) to myself that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable. I began counting days (again), this time counting hours, since whole days without drinking seemed unimaginable. I’ve got twenty-four hours sober. Now I’ve got forty-eight hours sober. Now I have a week. During my first few meetings, all I could do was weep. The only words I could whisper were, “Hi, I’m Debbie, I’m—”

  Once I stopped crying long enough to speak, I was afraid to share with the others, as they call it. When I finally forced myself to talk, that’s what I spoke about: fear. I told strangers that I’d always been afraid ever since I was a little girl. I was afraid of my father’s elbows pounding the dinner table in a pocket of silence. I was afraid the laundry wouldn’t be there when we got back, and of my mother crying. I was afraid of that steel-toe boot smashing against my face.