Deborah Voigt, the opera soprano who was fired from a London production last year for being overweight, underwent gastric bypass surgery, her publicist said.
Voigt called the procedure, which creates a small pouch out of the top of the stomach and connects it to half of the small intestine, “a blessing,” according to The New York Times, which first reported the surgery on its Web site Saturday.
Voigt’s publicist, Albert Imperato, confirmed that the operation occurred but declined to discuss details.
Voigt, 44, reportedly had the surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York last June, months after she was fired from a production of Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos” at Covent Garden in London because she could not fit into the costume for the title character.
She resumed performing seven weeks after the operation and has received positive reviews of her singing since then. She told the Times she was going public because everyone asked her about her new look.
“I felt it was time to talk about it,” she said. “I don’t want to be dishonest.”
Voigt, who reportedly lost 100 pounds after the surgery, did not say how much she weighed, but said she now wears a size 14 dress and hopes to get down to a size 12. At her heaviest, she said she wore a size 30.
“I really still think of myself as a very big woman,” she told the Times. “My mind hasn’t had the opportunity to catch up with the progress my body has made in a short amount of time.”
Voigt will perform April 4 in New York when she sings the role of Amelia in the first of eight performances of the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of Verdi’s “Ballo in Maschera.”
