Phillip Hill

Elizabeth Caruso
UWRT 1102
29 October 2016
The Millennial Approach to Opera: Body Shaming and Beautiful Singing
As an arts community, the Opera world has been through much change in the past few
hundred years. In its youngest phase, back when men ruled the world in the 1600s, women were
strictly banned from performing on stage. The first Opera performed, written by Monteverdi, was
probably a pivotal moment in gender rights at the time. This is because women were strictly
banned from stage performances prior to Operas appearance. In this first opera, women were
finally allowed to perform on stage, because roles were being written for females and it would be
required for them to sing in their female vocal registration. It would be odd to have a man
singing the role of an ingenue with a soprano voice. Up until this point, and even well after, the
castrati (men who would be castrated in order to sing higher) would perform womens roles as
well as sing soprano or alto in church choirs. This being said, the Opera world has always been
an accepting entity, and has always been all-inclusive due to the acceptance of women on stage;
but. uUnfortunately, the industry recently has been taking a turn that nobody could have
anticipated.
In the 20th Century, certain overweight singers such as Luciano Pavarotti and Montserrat
Caballe were praised for their voices, rather than ridiculed for their size. For them, it was much

less about the character being portrayed, and much more about the raw vocal power that they
possessed. A WQXR New York radio host, Midge Woolsey, describes an event that happened to
him pertaining to heavier singers:
The last time I attended the final round of the Metropolitan Opera National Council
Auditions (it was four or five years ago, I think) I remember sitting there listening to singer
after singer thinking "That's fine, but..." The women were attractive. The men were good
looking. But, something was definitely missing.

Then came the proverbial "fat lady." With complete confidence, this young woman took the
stage and knocked our socks off. Her voice shot through the house and bounced off the back
wall. It was a wakeup call in every way. And, the audience exploded with enthusiasm. For
me, this is when opera is at its most exciting. (Woolsey, 2010)

In his description, Woolsey states that the audience exploded with enthusiasm because of
the voice, not because of the appearance. This goes to show that overweight singers with the inherent
ability to produce gorgeous sound can still command an audience and elicit an emotional response.
Specifically for a historical icon like Pavarotti, who actually had terrible professional etiquette
(canceling more than half of his performances with the San Francisco Opera), audiences would be
sold out solely based on wanting to hear Pavarotti live and in the flesh. Never mind the fact that he
was difficult to actually see live due to the performances being canceled, but the voice alone was
enough to fill seats and create valuable revenue for the opera houses that he performed at.

At the turn of the 21st century, opera houses across the world began to notice a decline in
ticket sales, and began to weed out reacted to this by substituting their heaviest (and in most
cases, best) singers in order to hire with singers who fit the role physically (source
hereBeeching, 2005). This has led to opera companies hiring people who look like supermodels,

and they will accept nothing less, with few exceptions- most of these exceptions being men. This
is due to the millennials idea of beauty, which portrays Barbies, Kens, and Adonises. Physical
fitness is important, but is it really necessary in opera? In order to get a younger generation of
people in the seats to buy tickets and keep the art form alive, opera companies such as the
Metropolitan Opera or the San Francisco Opera are forced to hire good looking people that
appeal to the new-age audiences. In fact, the San Francisco Operas website braggingly
saysstates that, any of our singers could also be fashion models.
Lets look at an example of a singer who was fired because of her weight. In 2004,
soprano Deborah Voigt was set to perform a run of Ricard Strausss Ariadne auf Naxos at
Londons Royal Opera House. Being hailed as the best Ariadne of her time, having solidified her
interpretation of the role, it was certain to be a riveting and worthwhile performance. However,
the director decided that she (Voigt) was too fatobese to fit into the black cocktail dress that he
envisioned for the character (Bose, 2015). Voigt responded to this unjust incident, saying, to
hear that an opera singer, of all people, would be fired for being too fat not to mention an
internationally famous singer in a role she was internationally famous for singing was
ludicrous, even to non-opera lovers.
Similarly, as was mentioned in my inquiry path, mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught also faced
ridicule because of her size. Her debut Opera was Strausss Der Rosenkavalier. She was
finally going to be a performer after years of rigorous training, and the size 14 mezzo was shot
down for her size in the reviews. One reporter referred to her as a chubby bundle of puppy-fat,
while another (the London Times) called her unbelievable, unsightly, and

unappealing (Tsioulcas, 2014). Critics arent just mean to overweight singers, they are
downright brutal. The average dress size for a woman in America is a size 16. We cannot
continue to have these double standards for people in any profession - not just opera. We cannot
allow people to train for all of these years just to be ridiculed in reviews.
Pedagogically, there are a few reasons that overweight singers might sound better to the
human ear. The sSinging voice consists of blowing air through the vocal cords, causing them to
vibrate, and to thus creatinge sound. Once the sound has been created, itthe vibrations travels
into your skull, where you can have your pick of the various resonators. Operatic singing
requires open space in the back of the throatpharynx, as well as a concentration of sound in the
sinus cavities and a low sense of abdominal support. Because the size of the bodily cavities
matters, overweight singers already have an advantage. The chest cavity of a sizable singer will
automatically be bigger than that of a slimmer singer, therefore allowing the sound more space to
vibrate. If a singer has a belly, then gravity is acting upon the abdominal muscles, causing breath
support to come more naturally. This isnt to say that bigger larger people are better singers, but
it does speak for the inherent size of the sound and how the human ear will perceive said
sound. On the opposite side of the coin, singers who are physically fit may have better control of
their abdominal muscles, and be better able to activate those muscles in order to support the
voice. Similarly, slimmer singers will have more stamina, so there is definitely a trade-off there.
In short, there really is no fundamental difference between heavyweight singers and
physically fit singers, but the issue is more of an ethical one. Should overweight singers be fired
or ridiculed even after a beautiful job? Absolutely not. Deborah Voigt has since lost a ton of

weight, and her voice will never be the same because of it. Without the added support and space
from her sizeable body, she had to re-learn a lot of her vocal technique. It is scary to know that
the future of opera rests in the hands of the superficial younger generation, because some people
will never know the joy of listening to a spectacular voice live, purely for the voice enjoyment of
sound. So the fat lady sang, the fat lady lost weight, and the fat lady still sings, but the journey
was long and perilous - and not without ridicule or pain, and her voice will never be the same
again.

Works Cited

Beeching, A. M. (2005). Beyond talent: Creating a successful career in music. Oxford:

Oxford University Press. (Old Source)
Bose, S. (2015, February 20). Criticized for her weight, opera star Deborah Voigt speaks
up. Retrieved November 5, 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/
criticized-for-her-weight-opera-star-deborah-voigt-speaks-up/2015/02/19/fe69e79e-b6b0-11e4aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html (New Source)
Tsioulcas, A. (2014, May 20). In 2014, The Classical World Still Can't Stop Fat-Shaming
Women. Retrieved October 14, 2016, from http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/
2014/05/20/314007632/in-2014-the-classical-world-still-cant-stop-fat-shaming-women (Old
Source)
Woolsey, M. (2010, October 20). Opera's Weighty Debate: Does Size Really Matter?
Retrieved November 2, 2016, from http://www.wqxr.org/story/98817-does-size-really-matter/
(New Source)