Most of the time, I cringe when news sources abuse cliches, but this story was just screaming for it, and I can't believe they didn't use it. Opera singer Deborah Voigt was fired from a Royal Opera House production in London because she was too fat.
In an interview last month with the Andante recording company's magazine, Voigt reportedly expressed outrage at Covent Garden's decision.
"You know I believe this attitude towards heavy people is the last bastion of open discrimination in our society," Andante quoted her as saying. "Get this: The management of Convent Garden just released me from my contract for Ariadne auf Naxos in 2004. They simply said I was too fat! It makes me so angry."
The story continues, and we don't know how the issue will be resolved, but it ain't over until the fat lady sings.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Speaking of things being screamed out for: since the world will want to know what "too fat" is, I've added a photo. More here.
2 - duane
She looks very sweet and sophisticated. What's the deal?
3 - Eric Olsen
According to the article they just didn't "see her" in the role. I thought it was sort of a rule tht opera singers had to be abundantly fleshy.
4 - duane
I think the "rule" was invoked for Wagner, you know, what with the helmets and all. It probably became more of a custom, rather than a rule, for the singers to be somewhat rotund, because the customers came to expect that based on their preconceptions of what makes an opera authentic. Maybe MTV is ruining opera, too.
5 - Jim Carruthers
I think it really comes down to acoustics, the larger the volume, well, the more volume. They don't call her Jes' Enormous for nothing.
6 - Eric Olsen
Yes, in the days before amplification, it took a big voice and a big body to reach the rafters. And there is a double-standard as well: I don't believe Luciano was ever canned for being too fat and I guarantee you he outweighs this woman by a jockey or two.
7 - ClubhouseCancer
Eric and Jim:
The "bigger is louder" argument isn't always true. A bigger chest cavity tends to be louder, but it varies widely from person to person. The true correlation, physically, has to do with the ratios of lung size, throat length, throat width, head size, trunk size, and other factors. The biggest opera singers are definitely not always the loudest.
And training is THE most important factor in a singer's volume, always.
And Eric, the "before the days of amplification" part is a little off, too. Almost all modern, serious staged operas still do not use amplification. At important houses like the Met in NY or the SF Opera, the voices of the singers onstage are never amplified.
There is a lot of debate about this topic, in that some houses (including the New York City Opera's State Theater) do use sound enhancement to compensate for bad acoustics (the theater was designed for dance, where you want the folks onstage to be QUIET), so it's not all natural sound everywhere. But if you go to a big opera house in a big city, you're still almost certainly gonna hear a real singer singing unamplified. Just like it was when a bunch of Florentine monks invented opera 400 years ago.
And Deborah Voigt is a glorious singer, famous for her Wagner and Strauss roles, but (this is rare for a soprano) she has also of late excelled in the Italian repertory. (This is sort of like having power and speed for a baseball player â€" Italian stuff like Verdi is light, melodic and intricate, while German stuff is powerful and broad. These are VERY MUCH generalizations, of course.)
She's also a beautiful woman who has sllimmed down some in the last couple of years, and her Ariadne is one for the ages â€" her 2001 record of it is already a classic of that kind of thing. The London Opera should be ashamed, and their subscribers should revolt!
8 - Eric Olsen
God, you're a know-it-all, woman, but you do know a hell of a lot. I know very little little about opera (and find most of it really icky) other than vague generalities about size having some bearing on volume and ability to project, so the rest was news to me and very interesting at that.
9 - Mac Diva
I can't believe this. Yes, being overweight is bad for one's health. Being unemployed is even worse. . . Unless the work is somehow made dangerous by obesity this makes no sense.
10 - ClubhouseCancer
Then you'll probably wanna steer clear of the German repertoire, and hence of Ms. Voigt's work, but going to see a big-time staged Italian opera (one you've heard of, like by Verdi or Puccini) in NY or Milan or Paris or SF or Covent Garden, is a fabulous experience, as often there are, like 60 elaborately costumed people, a huge working drawbridge, wild animals, little children, cats and dogs, a guy with a funny hat, and a bunch of really fat folks waving fans.
Oh, yeah, and some pretty music.
Plus, you can follow the story even if you don't know the whole opera or speak Italian, as now they've got fancy subtitles. At the Met, they're on the back of the seat in front of you, and you can angle the screen so you can't see them if you don't want.
If anyone cares, I can recommend some classical vocal music that isn't so icky. But I get it if people just don't like it. I didn't before, and now I do.
Sorry about the know-it-allism. Funny, no one's ever mentioned it before.
11 - richard
There certainly seems to be a correlation between physical size & vocal enormity. By most accounts, the loudest opera singer of the 20th century was soprano Gertrude Grob-Prandl & she was very large by any standard. The Guinness Record Book mentions the loudest voice belonged not to a singer at all, but rather to the world's heaviest man (at that time), whose name I cannot recall. I sort of remember the bio saying that his sustained yell could be heard for something like 3 miles across a lake in still weather.
On the other hand, I can think of several small-bodied singers who had decidedly outsized voices: sopranos Berit Lindholm & Ursula Schroeder-Feinen (who excelled in the big Wagner roles), and tenor Bernardo di Muro (a serious rival of Caruso).
12 - bhw
I don't think size has much to do with volume. I'm 5'7" tall and weigh 125 pounds. And let me tell you, when I sing, people are always covering their ears.
13 - vassilis
since I am a countertenor and a rather loud one at that, I think I ought to have some say in all this. Foremostly, Opera did not really begin in a monastery but rather in an assembly of scholars and musicians called La Camerata, with the intention to revive ancient Greek and Roman Tragedy while reinserting its musical aspect which had been obliterated. Secondly but of equal importance is the fact that the operatic stage was doominated by the castrati. The sheer cut-off-the-kid's-nuts apart from eventually driving some of them really nuts for quite apparent reasons, also had a bearing on the boy's development. They would grow taller, longer limbed and their chests and lungs grew to unusual proportions. Hence the music written for them demanded lots of elaborate ornaments on one single breath. Why? Simply because they could perfectly execute them! And do not let anyone tell you that Baroque music was mellow or of small volume! The baroque instruments had loud and clear sounds almost void of today's damp and longer vibrating instruments. The singers had to deal with a great deal more hustle and bustle in the theatre than today. Hence almost all opera introductions are so loud! Charles Burney is an invaluable source. Therefore today's operatic singers are in need of what their predecessors the castrati had by "nature". The best way ?? achieve it though passes very far from obesity. The diaphragm expands with the inhalation and squeezes the abdomen and the stomach lower. A full stomach cannot be pressed. As for the fat around the vocal box it is like a stereo system. The clearer the signal to the amplifier the better sound the loudspeakers will produce. The cords produce the sound, it is then amplified in the larynx and project the sound towards the mouth ears nose cavity. The higher the note the smaller the resonating cavity employed. The wide sternum is more usefull for containing a healthy amount of air rather than be a resonator. Now imagine a body that is wide due to obesity try ?? breathe, press down the entrails and project an already muffled sound to fat covered resonators that further muffle the sound. That is is not at all good sound. A healthy body will be able to breathe better and sing better with all the harmonics of the notes present and not hidden unders tons of fat. If the body is in a generally good health level that will definitely show in the singing as well. I apologize for any mistakes.
14 - vassilis
I forgot to mention that forensic and anthropological studies proved that people in the Baroque era were quite shorter than us. The height of a baroque ceiling is really deceptive! And please bear in mind that the sound resonates on the facial bone structure, what is otherwise known as "the mask". Healthy proportions of muscle and fatty tissue provide natural dampening but the end product is controlled by the mouth orifice, the hard and soft palates, the tongue which is a huge muscle and the fatty tissue serves only as a soundproof cushion that absorbs the harmonics. Our voice may sound big within ourselves but the spectator does not think the same way...