Slimmed down Voigt returns to play Ariadne

Four years ago Deborah Voigt (pictured), the American opera singer, was fired from the Royal Opera House's production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos for being too fat. Last night, having lost 135lbs in weight, she returned to the Covent Garden stage to rapturous applause to perform in the same opera.

The decision to dismiss Voigt in 2004 sparked a ferocious debate at the time about weight discrimination in opera. She had been scheduled to play the lead in the ROH's summer production of Ariadne, but the casting director decided the titular Greek goddess should wear a slinky, black evening dress and believed Voigt would not look right in it. So off she went.

But last night she was back – and in "that dress", something she was able to accomplish not because of a brutal diet regime, but because of a gastric bypass operation. "When I got the call from my manager, I have to admit my first reaction was to laugh, because we had come full circle," Voigt, 47, said before opening night. "When that happened, I didn't anticipate ever coming back, because I didn't think they would invite me." (Continued below)

Voigt has put the original episode behind her and has nothing but praise for the "warm and welcoming" reception she has received from the ROH. She has even poked fun at the furore by releasing a YouTube video entitled 'The Return of the Little Black Dress', in which she and her slinky nemesis make up. "It just seemed at the time that we weren't a good fit," the dress tells the now svelte singer in the clip. "But times change, people change."