Deborah Voigt

Soprano

She keeps winning the prizes: the Tchaikovs competition, the Verdi competition, the Rosa Ponselle competition, and, last February, the Richard Tucker Award. But then, Californian Deborah Voigt is just so unmistakably the real thing— a diva in the classic mold, with a warmly gorgeous and generous soprano, matched to a grandly Scaled stage personality. This season she takes center stage as two of opera's lovelornest ladies, Leonora in Verdi's II Trovatore and Ariadne in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos.

High Notes

The future of American opera takes a bow at New York's Metropolitan, where the new season features -and-coming talents.

Rupert Christansen

Dolora Zajick

Mezzo-soprano

The name is Czech, she was bom in Nevada, but her voice is pure Italian.

Not since the 1950s, when legendary names such as Ebe Stignani and Giulietta Simionato tore up the stage alongside Maria Callas, has there been a dramatic mezzo-soprano stronger in impact or richer in tone than Dolora Zajick.

Her portrayal of the old Gypsy Azucena in Verdi's II Trovatore, which she repeats at the Met this season, is bold, brave, moving, and—well, just wonderfully loud.

It's hardly surprising that Vladimir Chernov's great hobby is woodworking— his baritone sounds like the finest mahogany, crafted with an impeccably smooth finish. An outstanding member of a generation of talented young singers

who have flooded out of Russia since glasnost, he plays the mysterious Count di Luna in Verdi's II Trovatore at the Met in January. Gqief-stricken fathers and cloak-and-dagger roles are a specialty, but behind the gloom and doom there's a wicked sense of humor.

Vladimir Chernov

Baritone

Ruth Ann Swenson

Soprano

Floating seraphically through music which leaves other fingers breathless and and earthbound, earthbound, Ruth Ruth Ann Ann Swenson Swenson is is the the airiest airiest of of coloratura coloratura sopranos with a thrill of a trill and top notes that melt into hfeayen.

But she's no empty-headed soubrette:

Swenson's charms are saccharin-free and her intelligence razor-shar Having stormed Paris's Opera Bastille as Susanna in Mozart's Le Nozze di figi to wow the Met as Adina in Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore and Zerbinetta in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos.

Frank Lopardo

Tenor

A heady, agile

highflier of a singer, Frank Lopardo is a tenor me.

No handkerchief-clutching melodrama, no strangulated top C, because it all seems to come free and easy to this lithe and witty master of vocal aerobics. The Met has scheduled him for Tamino in Mozart's Die Zauberflote, Fenton in Verdi's Falstaff, and Idreno in Rossini's Semiramide—ro I es demanding a youthful elegance and energy which his clean-cut style can effortlessly encompass.

Patricia Schuman

Soprano

Patricia Schuman knows how to change track.

First she trained as a teacher of religious education; then she became a professional mezzo-soprano.

Only in 1985, following advice from Marilyn Horne, did she decide that her destiny lay in the higher realm of soprano. Seven years later, she's still up there, a leader in the Mozartean field.

But in October she sets out to explore new territory again, with a leading role in the Met's premiere of Philip Glass's opera about Columbus,

The Voyage.

FOR OTHER CREDITS SEE PAGE 292