Hunter-gatherer nomadic tribes who have to walk miles every day to get their food normally don’t have obesity problems, true. But…it’s human nature to eat lots and to gain weight when food is plentiful; like all mammals, we’re hardwired for that. We don’t have any way of knowing how often our prehistoric ancestors found themselves a rich valley full of slow and stupid game, settled in to the life of Riley, and all got fat for a while.
Obesity isn’t anything new to homo sapiens (in Job 15, Eliphaz the Temanite says, in the midst of his rhetorical flourishes, “Though his face is covered with fat and his waist bulges with flesh”, and here’s an 18th century illustration of obese people)–it’s viewing it as a brow-furrowing, pundit-spawning, hand-wringing social problem that requires government intervention to fix that’s new. The people in the 18th century (and Bible times) who would have been regarded as obese by today’s pundits would have been astonished to hear it–in their view, they were robustly healthy, living “high on the hog”. Fat was good, fat was healthy, fat meant you were rich (or at least “comfortable”) and eating good and weren’t wasting away with tuberculosis or malnutrition. Given an abstract choice by a wand-waving fairy between having an appearance that was “normal” size, and having jowls and what used to be called a “corporation”, they’d probably have chosen the prosperous-looking jowls and belly every time.
Since opera singers perform such a large distance away from their audience, too, the audience may not perceive the singers as “fat”, whereas your average jazz or pop singer is right up in front of them, and it’s hard to miss if that glorious voice is pouring out of someone who, technically, might be termed obese.
The idea that all opera singers are hugely fat is pretty outdated. Thomas Hampson isn’t exactly skinny–but he looks just fine to me. And when I was lucky enough to see Placido Domingo here in Houston–my first thought wasn’t “he could stand to lose a few pounds.” (Actually, it was “what a fine-looking man!” And that was before he began to sing.)
Pavarotti definitely tipped the scale–but he is no longer with us. He died from pancreatic cancer but, according to Wikipedia: The later years brought a decline in ability to perform on stage due to a weight gain and lack of mobility.
Domingo, for example, plans to continue concerts & conductiong for years. So I’m sure he’s taking care of his health.
The answer to the OP’s specific question is easy. Vocal talent is the primary consideration for opera singers, so what you get is a more representative cross-section of people (appearance-wise, anyway) than you get in more visually driven pursuits like film and pop music.
The simple fact that being overweight does not immediately disqualify a talented person from succeeding in opera is enough to create the perception that weight actually has something *to do * with success, or that heaviness is more prevalent among singers than among other people.
In my experience as an opera singer (trained 9 years, worked 11-12, still work on a part-time basis), there are in fact fewer heavy people among singers than among the general population.
For every person you meet in the business with a weight problem, there are several who are in great shape and who have more “media friendly” body types.
There is nothing about being overweight that contributes to vocal ability. In fact, it hurts more than it helps. Weight-related problems like sleep apnea, acid reflux, and poor mobility all degrade the quality of a voice over time, and extreme weight can even impede breathing by virtue of requiring so much effort to support the weight of the chest and torso.
Natural body type does contribute to vocal sound and ability (shape/size of the vocal tract, skull anatomy, size of the rib cage, etc.), but body fat does not.
Lastly, while being overweight does not disqualify a person from success in opera, it is a problem. Having an appealing and charismatic stage presence is a big part of casting, especially for leading and romantic roles.
I wonder what the cleaners used to remove the goo from the seats at the Royal Opera House last year after Suzanne McNaughton’s performances of Venus in Handel’s Orlando?
I remember reading one of Maud Hart Lovelace’s books (the Betsy-Tacy series) when I was a kid, and the main character’s sister grows up to study opera. When she returns home for a visit, her family exclaims at how “fat” she’s gotten. I wonder whether it was more that she wasn’t wearing a corset (the series is set around the turn of the century and first decades of the 1900s), because I have a feeling that corsetry would severely limit one’s ability to sing. Perhaps the idea that women in opera were more likely to be fat started back then, when in fact they just didn’t wear corsets/girdles (and thus their waists were larger than the general population)?
It is definitely tough to sing in a corset…or so I’m told
But your post brings up another related point. Many of the famous people referenced as “fatties” in opera are from different eras when physical fitness in general was less of a focus. I remember reading in Leonard Warren’s biography that he deliberately *avoided * excercise to keep from doing himself or his voice harm. Heck, jogging wasn’t even a common activity until the 1960s.
Furthermore, some of the turn-of-the-century names already mentioned (or maybe it was in the other, less civil, thread) like Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini, were from a time when large size was more fashionable – a sign of wealth and priviledge.
