I'll Spare You The "Fat Lady Sings" Reference
Here's an article, sent in by K, about Deborah Voight, the opera singer who was fired from the Royal Opera for being too fat. She had weight-loss surgery (although she had the consultation before she was fired) and lost a significant amount of weight; in the article, she talks about the changes in her voice and her body, the ups and downs of having the surgery, and the reason she said "yes" when the Royal Opera invited her back for a production next year.
"Salome is a role, she says, that she would never have been asked to do before the surgery - despite the fact that she is acknowledged as one of the great Strauss interpreters. 'I'm not sure I would have have wanted to see me, 150lbs heavier, singing Salome.... [But] it always bothered me when people said such and such is not believable in a part because we don't believe that [at her size] the tenor would love her.'"
It's a great, complicated, in-depth article. Thanks, K!
"Salome is a role, she says, that she would never have been asked to do before the surgery - despite the fact that she is acknowledged as one of the great Strauss interpreters. 'I'm not sure I would have have wanted to see me, 150lbs heavier, singing Salome.... [But] it always bothered me when people said such and such is not believable in a part because we don't believe that [at her size] the tenor would love her.'"
It's a great, complicated, in-depth article. Thanks, K!
posted by mo pie at 10:41 AM
8 Comments:
Arg - I am an opera singer, and this is the sort of thing that has always frustrated me. Nothing about opera is believable, so justifying ANYTHING by saying "it wouldn't be believable" is patently ridiculous. Desdemona in Otello is supposed to sing a string of pianissimo high Fs just after being stranged (believable? um, no). Violetta is supposed to be in the last stages of consumption through all of La Traviata, yet she ends her life on the kind of perfectly-pure controlled high A it takes the musical equivalent of an olympic athlete to produce. Believable? Uh-uh.
Every female character in the classic operas is 16 years old and the prettiest girl in the village, but no 16-year-old girl, pretty or ugly, has the vocal maturity, the experience or the chops to make it through a run of one of these incredibly demanding shows without destroying her voice.
Only a tiny percentage of the population can do this job at all, and an even tinier percentage do it well, and of those, an even tinier percentage can do the roles like the Strauss and Wagner operas that require not only absolute vocal mastery, but a voice that is a freak of nature and can cut through the gigantic orchestras these composers wrote for.
When I started out in the industry, it was conventional wisdom that you just have to get past what these people look like, and consider it a big-ass bonus if one of them resembles a film star. Salome is one of the most difficult roles in the repertoire. The number of people who can do it justice is vanishingly small, but, sadly, even in the rarified world of opera, we're reaching a point where appearance is primary, and even the voice comes second.
Also "the tenor wouldn't find her attractive" - um, cut me a fricking break. The tenors who can sing these roles are just as lumpy a lot as the sopranos (Ben Heppner, the current leading Wagnerian tenor, is anything but svelte, but his voice is pure heaven, and the size of an orchestra, all on its own).
I heard Ms. Voight being interviewed on NPR last weekend and she came across there, also, as being very candid and very well-spoken. I like her a lot. If I was capable of sitting through an entire opera, I'd go see her. I also think the photo of her as Aida is just as cool and the photo of her as Salome.
And I agree with Mary Garden up above, who has probably forgotten more about opera than I will ever know, on the point of heavy tenors. Did anyone ever fire Pavarotti or Heppner for their size? Did anyone ever question whether an opera heroine would be able to find one of these men attractive? Hell no...
I agree, Jen - fat male singers face discrimination too, but it really isn't quite as awful as what women go through.
Also, I'm totally with you: if you can find someone who can sing the hell out of a role, AND act, AND is pretty to look at, you should hire them. To a phenomenal degree, younger singers are falling in line with the increasingly tight beauty requirements, and it's not hard to find a pretty girl who can sing and act the hell out of Figaro's Susanna or Boheme's Mimi. My point was that it IS hard to find a pretty girl who can sing Salome. The role is brutal - it's conventional wisdom in opera circles that no one should even try it until they hit their 40s, and that rules out the "fresh flesh" factor entirely. If you're doing it right, you are ALWAYS going to be dealing with a singer who is 'not believable' in the role of a hot 16-year-old.
Also, I don't like the implication that just because someone is fat or not young they are going to be a terrible bore on stage. Sure, there are a lot of singers like that (Pavarotti is a good example), but look at Marilyn Horne, for example. She did a Carmen in the 70s that would melt your hip sockets and she was deep into her 40s, short, and probably 250 pounds. Maria Callas lost her voice then her life partly due to the bullemia that helped her stay thin and fashionable looking (she was mercilessly hounded about her weight at the start of her career).
I actually think the trend toward better production values and acting is a good one. Many opera programs still don't require their singers to take straight acting classes, and they really should. What I object to is the "pretty people uber alles" mentality. It's sort of like kicking Michelangelo out of the sistine chapel because you've found someone whose ass you like looking at better when they're up on the scaffolding.
Thanks for the hat-tip, bethk! :)
Oh - also, my point was not that Ben Heppner and ilk don't suffer size discrimination, but that it's patently ridiculous to say that it's unrealistic for someone who is the male equivalent of Deborah Voigt to appear to find Deborah Voigt attractive on stage.
Mary, you so rock.
Other than saying I didn't know La Callas had bulimia (how did you find that out?) and noting that her weight did not stop the soprano who sang the last Tosca of this past season at the Met from graciously receiving her standing ovation, I have nothing further to add, really, to your cogent analysis.
Dude, littlem! I did not know you were an opera fan. Thank you for the compliment!
Actually, I'm afraid I can't authenticate the Callas bulimia story - it is just one of those things that has come up again and again as unsubstantiated fact in conversations with other vocal technique geeks. I know that there is, however, documented evidence that she deliberately infected herself with tapeworms to stay slim, which can't have been healthy.
That was Deborah Voigt! The Tosca at the Met last year, I mean - right? I didn't see it, but heard she was going to be doing it. I bet that rawked.
I saw a documentary on La Callas, it said that she initially got the tapeworm by accident and "magically" lost a bunch of weight, then the worm was found, treated, and she gained weight back right away. THEN she sought out re-infection on purpose.
I'm afraid I can't remember the name of the documentary. I saw it years ago when I lived at home (with my opera-nut mother).
Thanks for the insights into opera, Mary! I'm not an opera buff so I had no idea about the physical demands of singing.
And that tapeworm story has put me off my dinner. ;-)
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