Deborah Voigt: Off The Scales

Opera Star Talks About Lifelong Battle With Weight

(CBS)  The opera is usually performed in period costume. But the London director wanted Ariadne in a little black cocktail dress, not really an outfit for Voigt. Instead of changing costumes, the director changed sopranos. He fired Debbie and brought in Anne Schwanewilms, a little known German singer, who filled the bill — and the dress.

Voigt says she was very angry.

"I knew it was about weight. I mean, it was not like I rolled outta bed and went, 'What do you mean they're firing me because I'm too fat? I didn't know I'm too fat,'" she says.

It is said that, for artists, there is no such thing as bad publicity and Voigt agrees that applies to her and the Covent Garden episode.

"It's ironic to me because I've been heavy all my life. And I've fought it all my life," she says.

Voigt grew up outside Chicago in a deeply religious, Southern Baptist family. In church, she discovered the joys of music. At home, she discovered the psychological comforts of food.

"I used food as a way of stuffing down emotional feelings, from the time I was a small person. I was a sedentary child who was interested in music and I spent more time on a piano bench than I did on a bicycle," she says.

When she was 14, the family moved to Southern California, the land of endless sunshine and impossibly perfect bodies.

"It was a pretty big culture shock, I have to admit," Voigt says. "I think 14 is a rough age for anybody. And I think I became more aware of my weight moving from the Midwest to Southern California."

She could take some solace from the fact that the opera world she was heading for was a haven for the large-boned, the zaftig, even the enormous. From turn-of-the-century diva Luisa Tetrazzini, who had a pasta dish named after her, to latter day stars such as Jessye Norman and Jane Eaglen. Voigt followed in their heavy footsteps, and as her career soared, so did her weight.

Voigt says she tried many diets.

"Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, all great programs," she says. "But my problem was, the more I would lose, the more I would put on, ultimately, in the end."

And even in the tolerant atmosphere of the world's great opera houses, Voigt was not immune to embarrassment over her weight. There was an encounter with the late and great conductor Georg Solti, a man who never minced words.

"I went and I sang for Maestro Solti and afterwards he put his arm around me and he said, 'But I have to ask you, why are you so fat? Is it the food?' " she says.

It sounds terribly ironic that at a time when her career was soaring, she was unhappy because of her weight. "I've been unhappy about my weight all my life," she says.

And so it was that Voigt decided to have gastric bypass surgery, something she had been thinking about well before the dustup over the little black dress.

"I certainly didn't do it because of the Royal Opera House," says Voigt. "I did it because I wasn't feeling well, because my knees were hurting, because I would cross the street and feel as though I wasn't going to be able to catch my breath. Because, 'Oh my lord, I might have to sit in that chair at dinner and there are arms on it. And will I fit into that chair?'"

The three-hour operation at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital was a success.

Voigt says she noticed the weight coming off before she got out of the hospital. "Within a few days I could see in my face that the weight was starting to come off. I think I lost 30 pounds in the first month," she says.

Simon and the 60 Minutes team noticed a steady difference too, in the four months they followed her off and on — from backstage at the Met in New York to the Hollywood Bowl in California. Losing 135 pounds means there's a lot of closet cleaning to be done.

Voigt acknowledges that she has fulfilled the dream of just about every overweight woman, by knocking off the weight. "That's true. I still have to pinch myself a little bit."