Fat jokes about opera singers may soon be a thing of the past, writes Anna McAlister from The Age (australian newspaper).
In an old opera industry anecdote, an immense diva is rehearsing her entrance between members of the orchestra. With space at a premium, a musician suggests she walk sideways. "Honey," she replies, "I ain't got no sideways."
Fat opera singers have always inspired jokes among musicians, the public and the media. Especially attractive to bitchy operazzi are those who defend their size on artistic grounds.
A famous anecdote has it that Dame Nellie Melba once convulsed a dinner party by dropping to all fours to impersonate the unfortunate horse destined to carry the hefty soprano (Luisa Tetrazzini) in Les Huguenots. Tetrazzini was not insulted. She firmly believed that a healthy appetite was essential to robust singing.
"Some singers gotta the figure," she famously said once. "But Tetrazzini gotta the voice."
It appears there's nothing to support the claims of outsized opera stars who believe their fat actually helps their voices.
"Obesity only taxes a singer's cardiovascular system and actually impairs their ability to sustain long phrases," says John Nix, of Colorado's National Centre for Voice and Speech in the US.Opera conductor Richard Bonynge, husband and performance partner of Dame Joan Sutherland, agrees.
"The singers I've known who got overly fat, their voices tended to deteriorate rather than get better. Some of them go blue in the face when they're singing and their vocal cords stick out and it's terrifying."
Admittedly, Greek-American soprano Maria Callas' voice suffered irreparably when she shed 30 kilograms in 1954. Bonynge attributes this to her unhealthy rate of slimming. He says Callas lost weight extremely quickly and couldn't stop.
"She was a very big-boned woman and to reduce to the size of Audrey Hepburn was doing physical damage to her body. (Despite ill-health) she was determined to sing with the same sound she'd always had and so she began using muscles which she shouldn't have used, and her career was very short."
In their defence, the fact that so many obese singers have had stellar careers is testament to an extraordinary ability to cope with their weight. Nix puts this down to natural stamina.
So why is obesity an issue among opera singers?
"Ours is a very lonely profession," mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne once said. "Eating is company."
While this may account for a few, for other singers, weight-watching could be the downside of the strong, muscular build that's beneficial in their profession. And the problem can be compounded by travelling and performing lifestyle. Many touring artists complain of frustrated attempts to maintain an exercise routine or a disciplined diet when they're constantly changing locations and time zones.
Postponing dinner until after an evening performance could also contribute to weight-gain for some singers. They may avoid eating beforehand because digestion affects their breathing and makes them sleepy, or because of gut-wrenching performance nerves. But the trouble with regular late-night meals, possibly with alcohol to celebrate, is that they're closely followed by sleep instead of calorie-burning activity.
In 2004, US soprano Deborah Voigt was sacked from a Covent Garden production of Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos because she was far too fat for Ariadne's little black dress. Her weight has fluctuated over the years, and, at the time, she was by no means at her biggest.
Although outraged that her appearance was given greater importance than her voice, she conceded that she performed better, slimmer. In a recent interview for parterre box, the queer opera zine, she said:
"I want to take off another 50 pounds (22.67 kilos) if I can. But I feel so much better - and I feel like I can give more on stage. I think the weight loss has freed up my air, my breath. I don't get winded any more."
Voigt blames other singers' reports of weight-loss-related vocal deterioration on existing problems.
"Don't you think that when you see singers who've lost weight and then had a vocal crisis, those might be singers who were having vocal problems even before the weight loss and the diet just made it worse?"
In March The Age reported that Voigt had undergone gastric bypass surgery and lost 45 kilograms. Nix believes operatic obesity will soon be history.
"As we develop better and better ways for people to manage their weight and more emphasis in the operatic world on appearance and being able to look halfway convincing as a 25-year-old even though you're 50, the fat opera singer jokes will disappear because (very fat singers) just won't be able to compete unless they have an absolutely magnificent voice."
So far, however, sizeist ridicule is alive and well. In La Scena Musicale, columnist Norman Lebrecht describes a 2004 performance: "Big Lucy galumphed through his farewell run of Tosca at the Met. Shot by firing squad in the finale, Luciano Pavarotti (as Tosca's artist lover Cavaradossi) creaked ponderously to his knees onto what appeared to be a fortuitously positioned pile of beanbags before executing an arm-assisted sideways flop to expire in graceless comfort."
Anna McAlister is a Melbourne musician.
