The "fat lady singing" is over!

-- or --

Does my aria look big in this?

[Via Anthony]

Associated Press - 9 March 2004

LONDON (AP) — The Royal Opera House in London canceled a performance by American star soprano Deborah Voigt because of her weight, a spokesman for the prestigious theater said Sunday [7 March].

Voigt had been scheduled to play the lead in a summer production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, but casting director Peter Katona decided that a slimmer singer would be better for the part, spokesman Christopher Millard told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Katona [sic] had selected a black evening dress for the part and believed Voigt would not look right in it, Millard said.

"Normally Ariadne is presented on a stylized Greek island with the singers wearing toga-type clothes, but we wanted to present it in an elegant, modern evening dress," Katona was quoted as telling The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

Anne Schwanewilms, a more slender but lesser-known soprano, is now to sing the part of Ariadne.

Now this is harsh. The last bastion of freedom from the tyrannies of weight-control is crumbling. Now even the opera world is choosing the waistline over a singer's talent or fame.

Are the days of the zaftig lead soprano over? What's next? Valkyries on the Atk1ns Diet?

Comments

[Anthony]

Lemme start with a mean anecdote (and then move on to the truth):
An opera-loving friend of mine a few years ago told me about having seen "Tristan" at the Met with the English-American soprano Jane Eaglen and the Canadean tenor Ben Heppner. He raved about the singing and then cattily added "but they were both so large that they must have saved the Met a fortune in sets cause they took up so much room on stage"!
Meow.
The image of the zaftig opera singer, while not entirely untrue, is clearly a distortion of the actual historical record. Anyone halfway familiar with opera history knows that any number of famous 19th and 20th century singers were, if not anorexically thin and aerobics lean, not "huge" either. Look at Maria Malibran, Adelina Patti, Pauline Viardot-Garcia, Lillian Nordica, Lilli Lehman, Grace Moore, Rosa Ponselle, Rise Stevens, Selma Kurz, Maria Jeritza, Frieda Lieder, Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, Anna Moffo, Christa Ludwig, Kathleen Battle and Angela Georghiu (to name the most visible examples from the genre): by and large (so to speak) normal sized women.
The "legend" of the huge opera singer begins, essentially, with the Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad, whose Wagner performances in the 30s and 40s were legendary, as was her bulk. The myth continues with Maria Callas, who was fat during her early career (and many opera queens claim that after her weight loss in the late 50s--viciously attributed by some to a self-induced tape worm--she never sang as well) and has held on into the present day because of the high visibility of singers such as Montseratt Caballe, Jessye Norman, Rita Hunter, Renata Tebaldi, Jane Eaglen and, maybe, Voight (who has had an ongoing weight problems in her career). But given the relative absurdity of most opera casting, Covent Garden is showing not only hypocrisy but the baleful influence of what I (and others) spitefully call "Euro-trash concept" where directors' "vision" of the work takes precedence over what's--let's be honest--the real fun of opera: great voices. So good luck Covent Garden. I hope your Callista Flockhart Ariadne cracks in Act I.
And really, what sexist gall! Has anyone ever heard of Pavarotti (or Caruso, Gigli, McCormack, del Monaco, Krause, Bjorling, Melchior, Domingo, Vickers or Heppener) being denied a role because of their weight (and the combined tonnage of just those fellas could cause the Earth's axis to tilt)? Never. What never? No never? No, really, never!
But to show that there is a god, Voight's recent "Tristan" at the Vienna Staatsoper was subject to one of the longest curtain calls in recent Viennese history and not a single critic complained about her weight.

[pam]

Great observations, Anthony. Also, I think it's true in general as well as in opera, that there's a double-standard with regard to gender. Men can appear overweight but not be thought the less of, while women are held to a stricter standard of appearance.