Soprano Voigt lightens Wagner up

NEW YORK: Deborah Voigt found a way to make Wagner funny.

The soprano's intriguing recital program Sunday ended with Adieux de Marie Stuart, a song Wagner composed while he lived in Paris in 1839 or 1840. Faint echoes of the bombastic composer's revolutionary style can be heard in the lush piano piece.

And then, during the encores at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Voigt did a delicious turn on the composer, Wagner Roles, a song she commissioned from Ben Moore.

Why do I get stuck with Wagner roles?/I'd rather sing something light/Senta and Isolde weep and wail into the night/Long into the night.

And when somebody's casting Johann Strauss/Why don't they consider me?/His songs you can dance to, and what's more/He never wrote, a dissonant note/And he sticks to one key.

Moore's song contains snippets from Tristan und Isolde and Tannhaeuser, and a cadenza mimicking Rossini coloratura. It also takes swipes at the history of Wagner.

"I want to do shows by noble sorts/Whose enemies number zero/Not written by one who'd soon become/The Nazis' big hero.

Voigt, who turned 40 in August, appears most nights in serious roles such as Senta, Elisabeth, Elsa and Sieglinde. Just finishing a run as the Kaiserin in the spectacular new production of Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Met, she is getting ready to take on Isolde for the first time - Act II on Feb. 7 at the New York Philharmonic and a full performance at the Vienna State Opera on May 25, 2003.