By Tim Smith

For a lot of opera fans, the most frustratingly elusive grail is a true Wagnerian voice, one capable of as much power and precision as warmth and sensitivity. The search for that ideal is never-ending at major opera houses throughout the world, where some of the most beloved works by Wagner have to go unperformed for long stretches-or, worse, get treated to caterwauling by loud-louder-and-loudest voices, or the gasping of squeaky little ones sinking beneath the orchestra. No wonder so many people prefer to wallow in memories, real or imagined, of the good old days when big, yet beautiful, voices at least seemed to be more plentiful.

Then along comes Deborah Voigt, charging boldly into this nostalgia wave and turning back the tide.

"On the scene today, she is it, really," says a voice of authority-veteran baritone Thomas Stewart, the most commanding Wotan of his generation. His wife, soprano Evelyn Lear, who knows a thing or two about great dramatic singing, too, concurs. "Debbie has a magnificent voice," Lear says, "probably the voice of our time for singing Wagner. She also has great musicality and dedication. And no attitude."

With a disarming smile and a pair of vocal cords that could light a good-sized city, Voigt has been giving the opera world a much-needed jolt of splendid, Wagner-scaled singing, as well as a welcome dose of star quality. There's every indication that the 42-year-old soprano, already the leading Sieglinde, will add mightily to that wattage when she tackles the complete role of Isolde for the first time this spring at the Vienna State Opera; it could easily become the crowning moment of her remarkable career so far. Voigt offered a tantalizing glimpse of what's in store when she sang Act II and the "Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde last season with the New York Philharmonic, and when she recorded the love duet with Plácido Domingo on EMI. The fuss over her Wagnerian pursuits is readily explained. She fulfills, as few sopranos have, Wagner's own hope that his music be sung according to the same bel canto principles underlying Italian opera.

Folks who don't give a ho-jo-to-ho about Wagner may not get as excited about Voigt, but they can be grateful for the rest of her artistic activity. While Wagner is a substantial part of her life, she wisely keeps her options open-and her voice flexible. Verdi continues to figure into her schedule (Aida at the Metropolitan Opera this season); so does Puccini (Tosca in Vienna). And the soprano is a major draw for the Met's celebration of the bicentennial of Berlioz's birth-she sings Cassandre in a new production of his mammoth Les Troyens.

And then there's Richard Strauss. It's not too great a stretch to say that Voigt was born to sing this composer's shimmering music. People are already getting tingly over the thought of her first Marschallin in Der Rosenkavlier, slated for 2004 in Vancouver (thereafter in Vienna). Superlatives in the press poured out as rapturously as her voice in Die Frau ohne Schatten last season at the Met; few artists these days experience such an intense barrage of praise.

When the Isolde debut is added in with all her other activity-helping to celebrate the New York Philharmonic's 160th anniversary with arias by Weber and Beethoven, portraying the unhinged woman in Schoenberg's Erwartung for the first time (in Munich)-it's clearly shaping up to be Deborah Voigt's year.

The Illinois-born, California-raised, Florida-based singer has been working toward this moment for a relatively short time. A late-bloomer, Voigt didn't even hear her first opera until she was 20 (Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges, which, somehow, didn't put her off); her own vocal experience had been limited to choirs and high school musicals. Just how green was she? When her first voice teacher at California State University, Fullerton, asked Voigt to choose an aria to sing, the budding soprano picked out "Nessun dorma." (So Aretha Franklin wasn't the first woman to seize the tenor anthem after all.)

But Voigt quickly found her bearings. Her unusual combination of assets-evenness and firmness of tone throughout the registers; extraordinary breath control; intense, but securely focused, vibrato; vividness of expression-attracted attention. She spent two years as an Adler Fellow at the San Francisco Opera and, in 1985, was a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. A first-place victory in the Luciano Pavarotti Voice Competition came in 1988, followed by another win at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1990 and the Rosa Ponselle Foundation's Gold Medal that same year. Her Metropolitan Opera debut followed a year later (Amelia in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera).

The real career-starter for Voigt was arguably her first Ariadne, performed in 1992 with the Boston Lyric Opera; here, the full impact of her voice registered more impressively than ever, and soon reverberated throughout the opera world. Voigt became the reigning Ariadne of the decade; she still wears that crown securely. What elevates her interpretation is not only the ravishing tone, but incisive phrasing that can reveal Ariadne's aggravation, bemusement, longing, and dignity in equally telling ways. Amid all the farcical and fanciful goings-on, this Ariadne never loses her bearings, and, lifted by all that radiant singing, the character's ultimate transfiguration becomes as magical as it is logical.

Voigt does not necessarily win over every listener. One complaint, raised in Alan Blyth's otherwise respectful entry on her in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, is about a lack of "specificity" in her vocalism and acting. But this charge of non-individuality, which has understandably been leveled against any number of current singers, seems less and less applicable to Voigt. The particular glint in her timbre, mixed with the dash of creaminess that so effectively balances the underlying strength, has become readily identifiable.

Voigt's theatrical ability, too, seems to get more interestingly layered, year by year. And that helps to counter lingering prejudice against sizable figures onstage. The soprano herself is the first to note that she won't be doing every vocally ideal role in the opera house, joking that she's not about to do the Dance of the Seventy-Seven Veils in Salome. But Voigt is certainly capable of more theatrical ease and involvement than some well-known, large-framed colleagues.

The bottom line is really the size (and quality) of the voice, not the body. With Voigt, you get a voice that can sail over a full-throttle orchestra, without sacrificing tonal beauty in the process; that can hit notes dead-on, without scooping or slurring, yet without sounding coldly calculated; that can spin out long lines without showing a seam. And Voigt is, above all, a completely natural singer, which is why she communicates to an audience so warmly.

That communication is no less effective when she leaves the trappings of grand opera for the relative intimacy of the concert hall. The soprano has proven herself to be a stylish, engaging, imaginative recitalist. Instead of just stacking the deck with Strauss songs and a smattering of big-scale arias, her programs have dug deep into the song literature to mine fascinating, under-exposed items by the likes of Griffes, Gounod, Saint-Säens, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, and even Wagner. For encores, she's apt to caress a Gershwin standard (she's ripe for a crossover recording and already has the title-"Voigt Where Prohibited") or bring down the house with an amusing song written for her by Ben Moore that lets her lament being typecast in Wagner roles (and stuck with stage directors "who insist that you don't move a muscle for four-and-a-half hours"). Seeing Voigt have so much fun with a recital is in itself a lot of fun, driving home the charm of this singer, her unaffected enthusiasm and openness.

Nowadays, "diva" gets tossed around with alarming frequency, not to mention absurdity (pace Britney Spears), but Voigt gives the designation fresh meaning and validity. If future generations look back on our time and decide that it can be counted among the "golden ages" of singing, you can be sure that one of the main reasons will be Musical America's Vocalist of the Year, Deborah Voigt.

Tim Smith is music critic of the Baltimore Sun and author of The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to Classical Music.