Opera is about voices, not bodies. It is an art of long-distance perceptions: only a small portion of the audience is close to the stage, and TV or film distorts the medium entirely. Yet some opera house directors and managers (who cannot tell a good voice from a mediocre one) focus instead on an easier criterion—namely, who looks fat onstage and who looks thin.
The Met soprano Ruth Ann Swenson recently complained that she is underemployed because she is not “skinny enough” for Met general director Peter Gelb, who in his previous job as head of Sony Classical was guilty of promoting the ghastly, shrieking British “crossover” singer Charlotte Church. In 2003, the American soprano Deborah Voigt was fired from a London production of Richard Strauss’s opera Ariadne auf Naxos because she could not fit into a skimpy costume.
Ever since the art of opera developed—its first stars were castratos who became fat after being snipped— singers both fat and thin have gained stardom. Luisa Tetrazzini (1871-1941), the Italian coloratura soprano after whom a caloric chicken-and-pastadish was named, would say in her later years: “I am old, I am fat, but I am still Tetrazzini.” Indeed, her buoyant, exuberant performances may be enjoyed on CD reissues from Pearl and Nimbus. The hefty German-born contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink (1861-1936), a legendary glutton, sang with gusto and virtuosity into her 70’s, as CD’s on Nimbus prove.
Other female singers with lower voices followed in the Schumann-Heink tradition, like the stout Italian mezzo-soprano Ebe Stignani in recordings of Bellini’s Norma, with soprano Gina Cigna, and Verdi’s Requiem, alongside tenor Beniamino Gigli. Both recordings are available from Pearl. The most exuberantly overweight singer today is the Catalan soprano Montserrat Caballé (b. 1933), whose soft singing and breath control were superhuman in her prime, as a new EMI set of vocal highlights shows.
Always humorous about her weight, Caballé celebrated her 74th birthday recently in Vienna by paying public tribute to the Sacher-Torte, singing a brief serenade to the dessert before sampling it and then announcing, “Calories don’t exist!” I recall witnessing Caballé’s 1985 performance of Puccini’s Tosca at the Met, during which she eschewed the title character’s traditional jump off the ramparts of the Castel Sant’ Angelo, and instead just walked offstage with dignity. Considering her ravishing singing in “Vissi d’arte,” the aria that preceded her exit, she was forgiven by the audience (if not by some persnickety critics).
Opera is an art of freakish, exceptional beings, not of marketing-friendly looks. If we allow unimaginative directors and opera house bosses to censor singers because they are fat, soon older singers will also be banned, and we will miss great autumnal performances like those of tenor Alfredo Kraus, who sang artfully into his late 60’s. Similar “realistic” criteria are already being used to keep singers of color from being cast in opera roles, especially in Europe. So cheer those fat ladies singing—after all, even Mr. Gelb’s Charlotte Church has put on weight.
