I never tell that story to someone until after they’ve seen Tosca, lest it ruin the wonderful last scene for them.The story supposedly is actually true (according to Hugh Vicker’s in Great Operatic Disasters, practically the funniest book I’ve ever read) although he doesn’t say if it was Monserrat Caballe or not. It happened at New York City Center in 1960. At the end of the opera, Tosca defiantly faces the corrupt police chief who has killed her lover (and thwarted a patriotic plot, and is about to rape her), and dramatically leaps off the top of the Castel Sant’Angelo. The stage hands, whom this particular soprano had apparently treated quite rudely, put out a trampoline instead of a mattress to catch her. She bounced back into view fifteen times before they could get the curtain down.
I have seen a production on video with Sieglinde performed by Jesse Norman, who is not a “slip of a thing” by a long shot! Terrific singing, though, combined with sensitive blocking and costuming that rendered her performance quite effective. Mind you, Wagner is traditionally populated by larger than life singers, so my expectation was skewed from the start. On the other hand, although Hildegard Behrens struggled to survive the vocal demands of Brunnhilde, her singing was still inspiring and it was fun to see a singer that could conceivably leap around rocks with the other Valkyries.
In the best of all possible worlds, I would certainly enjoy a singer with a believable physique, but if I had to choose I would pick the great voice over the great body in nearly every case. I would be willing to bet that most of the Covent Garden audience would say the same. The choice to let Voigt go seems silly, unless this new singer is vocally amazing. IMO, the directorial experimentation that has been going on for the past decades is becoming seriously tiresome. Please, can we just have some good singing?
I’ve kicked around the physical appearance in a dramatic production issue a few times.
Bottom line, it doesn’t really matter if the story is well written and the peformers are talented.
Doesn’t exactly fit with the opera scenario, but…
Many, many years ago there was a short-lived dramatic series on PBS about this family… The father was played by a thirteen year old boy, the mother by a twelve year old girl, both white. The oldest daugheter was played by a sixteen year old black girl. Younger, son, eight year old boy, who I thing was supposed to be eleven or twelve.
It took about five minutes for me to suspend disbelief. The actors playing the adult characters handled themselves with enough maturity that it was fairly easy to swallow them as the parents of this obviously older girl. The black actress managed to affect “whiteness” to an extent that it was easy to fail to notice the difference in skin color. The younger boy managed to carry off a sensibility of a pre-teen very convincingly.
If this can be true for a visual medium like a television program, I think it would be even more true of a primarily auditory art form such as opera.
I say, let the fat lady sing.
Count me in with the ones saying “opera ain’t the movies”. The singer’s looks has never, in the history of opera, been as important as an actor’s looks are in Hollywood today. This is mostly because singing is key and partially because opera is performed onstage in large theaters and they don’t have to worry about close-ups. Even when Wagner lived and was staging his own operas he cast singers who weren’t merely heavy but completely unsuited for their roles physically. I’ve blanked his name, but one of Wagner’s favorite tenors played Lohengrin despite being so elderly that he could barely get out of the swan boat.
And unlike most of your examples above, it’s not like everyone is familiar with how Ariadne “really” looked through photos or commercial artwork. If someone cast Will Smith as Princess Diana we’d all instantly know he didn’t look like the real person, but when it comes to Ariadne there is no real person (or fictional character with a well-established image) to compare the performer to.
Unless Voigt was actually in danger of breaking the stage I don’t see any excuse for sacking her for being too fat.
Please apologize for this horribly inflammatory post; you know I said no such thing. And as for the rest of your post, you couldn’t have missed my point more if you tried. I used to wonder why you get pitted every ten seconds - I no longer wonder.
As a UK citizen, I find this horribly discriminatory. A friend of mine went to the Royal Academy, and one of her classmates was a terribly overweight soprano. She would have lost weight, but was terrified it would affect her voice. So she stayed fat.
The point being: above all, the voice is the critical thing. Most opera fans probably spend far more hours listening to recordings than going to performances - who can tell how fat or thin the singer is through headphone?
Exactly. Voigt has a voice that would be difficult to match. I don’t know that this was “discrimination” so to speak, but to dismiss a woman with a talent like that because she doesn’t fit the newfangled “visual” sense that you want to convey by taking an historically set opera and putting the characters into modern clothing? It’s stupidity on its face. And more importantly, it’s the kind of move that peeves subscribers and opera lovers who aren’t nearly as interested in innovative costuming as they are in hearing magnificent voices performing great roles.
Perhaps the Royal Opera can afford to have directors making these sorts of choices which can and will stir up strife within their base constituency, and you can best believe that this choice has done just that. This controversy has grown to such tremendous proportions (no pun intended) that it’s being discussed in rather heated terms in the mainstream press around the world, and by people who aren’t opera lovers. How much moreso, you must wonder, is it engendering anger and ticket cancellations and so forth amongst the supporters, subscribers and regular attendees of Royal Opera productions?
Now, two not quite on-topic points:
NQOT Point One:
In film and television, you’re correct. On stage, there is much greater flexibility – historically speaking – about hiring outside of race for characters who aren’t real people, and even occasionally when they are. As one stellar example, neither Yul Brynner nor Lou Diamond Philips could claim any Thai heritage, but both have been the King of Siam. Hispanic and East Asian actors routinely move fluidly across racial and ethnic “barriers” as do light-skinned African Americans (or white/black biracial actors). And this carries over into film and television as well.
NQOT Point Two:
Unless his condition has greatly deteriorated in the last year (since last I saw him perform) Itzhak Perlman uses crutches, not a wheelchair.
That’s just silly. I’m as good as anyone for finding excuses for not losing weight, but that one is laughable.
Blowero, I speak only for myself, but I drew pretty much the same conclusion that Aldebaran did when you posted this:
Should a Black opera singer be made to look Caucasian when playing Musette in La Boheme? I realize that you say that it was a criterium and not the only criterium.
“Appearance” in a human being is nothing. Taste and preferences are just habit – passing standards of beauty that have no intrinsic merit. Shall we enlarge our lips with plates? Elongate our necks with large rings? Crush our feet until the toes and heels touch? Starve ourselves until we get that heroin addict look? Wrap our breasts tightly to make our chests flat? All of these have been considered “beautiful” looks at one time or another during the past century. Beauty is whatever someone else chooses for you to believe it is.
In the very best of all worlds, there would be no problem believing the truth: Fat people love and are loved all the time. They get married. They have sex and they have feelings. They have their shares of adventure and chaos like everybody else. And everybody has a story they could be made into an opera.
Spiff, if this isn’t discrimination, then anything goes.
BTW, Maria Callas used to be morbidly obese. If that’s not the Maria Callas you remember, it’s because she got a tapeworm. Callas wasn’t the greatest singer of her day by a long shot. But her overall performances were stunning because she was an actress. Opera needs not only a magnificent voice, but also a reasonable amount of acting skill.
What’s-his-face should be banned from Covent Garden.
Othello is typically played by black men. This was true of every production and movie that I’ve seen (in the UK and US) except for Orson Welles’ version, which he did in blackface (many other prominent white actors did the same). Perhaps you were just unaware of this. The term Moor (which may come from a Greek word for “dark”) is an imprecise one, but it often means a Muslim from North Africa, in which case using a black actor isn’t really that far off. I guess Othello is usually cast as a black actor because of a lack of Arab actors, but I don’t know.
It might interest you to know that Patrick Stewart played Othello a few years back. Everyone else in the cast was black. It’s obviously not what’s in the text, but I can imagine it working. The key is that Othello doesn’t belong, the particular colors aren’t very important.
Whether or not this woman’s firing is justified, are people here really suggesting that appearance has nothing to do with casting actors? That’s absurd. Even if you do something like Stewart’s “photonegative” Othello, the apperance of the actors is still important.
I agree with blowero, Alde: you blew what he said way out of proportion to make him look like a bigot. It was a low blow and you were wrong. What he said was “physical appearance is obviously a criterium for entertainers.” It’s true. He didn’t say it was the only criterion, he didn’t even say it was the most important one. He just said that it was one, which is true.
Well - she was a professional singer-in-training, at one of the world’s top academies - so maybe there are risks with voice/weight loss? Otherwise I am sure her tutors would just have advised her to go ahead.
Bearing in mind her voice was her entire career.
FTR, I saw Deborah Voigt as the Empress in ‘Die Frau Ohne Schatten’ at the Met last November. Yes, she is a large woman, but she navigated the tricky sets and stairs and high elevated ‘heaven’ set at the same speed as the rest. She seems to have the energy and strength needed to do any part, and she’s one of the great 21st century Ariadnes. She was signed years ago and it seems pretty scurvy to drop her now.
I also saw Jane Eaglen in ‘Tristan’, though, and she is so massive that during the bedroom scene while Ben Heppner (considerably slimmer now) is kissing her, all she could do was sort of lean back on her elbows. Fortunately, it was a minimalist production with practically no sets or movement to begin with so it sort of fit. But as a theater fan I’m used to seeing blacks play white parts and even men play women and vice versa, so no biggie.
Actually, it’s not quite as silly as it appears, prima facie. There are anectdotal stories of at least one opera diva who’s career took a nosedive when she lost weight. I can’t recall the diva’s name, but I have heard it from several sources.
Marley23, let me reiterate what I said earlier, and what most of the pro-Voigt people have been saying, Opera has different standards than most other media. And again, this story isn’t about turning down a woman at a casting call because she doesn’t fit the director’s vision, it’s about firing a woman who is one of the talents of record in her field because the director is trying something novel and innoative with the costuming. A woman who was purposely hired for this part some time ago.
Contrary to the rumors that Gorilla Man mentioned, I can find no record on the web of her having suddenly inflated to her present size - so when she was originally contracted for the part, she looked as she does, now. In that case the director is, IMNSHO, showing himself to be an asshat. I don’t know whether it’s legal in the UK or not, but I don’t think it’s proper behavior, no matter where it’s happening.
I’m dating a skinny opera singer, so I guess I have no ability to judge. But I tend to doubt this, frankly. You can say in any theatrical setting that a person’s ability to convincingly enact the role is more important than her appearance. I’ve seen roles intended for blondes done perfectly by brunettes, and I’ve seen roles written for white people done better by non-white people. But appearance still plays a part sometimes. How is opera different?
I’m not saying I can explain this particular case. Maybe the weight thing is just a made-up excuse. But I posted because I was surprised by some of the things I was reading.
Part of the difference for opera is that the image many people have of the opera diva is, as I mentioned earlier, of a large, barrel-chested woman. This is something of a stereotype, I admit. And more power to the woman you’re dating to be in opera and not fulfilling that stereotype.
And, for my part, all my criticisms have been based on the fact that the woman was already contracted for the part. If she’d been passed over at a casting call, I’d not have said a word in support. Like most everyone else here, I believe the director and producer can choose to cast whomever they want for any role. I am disgusted that between contracting her and now, the director has chosen to put the costume ahead of the voice that had been chosen.
Voigt was not dropped overnight, rather over several years…
Why am I flashing on Pratchett’s Maskerade? 
Thank you, Marley 23. I’m glad at least one person read what I wrote, rather than creating a strawman position.
Zoe, I’m afraid you missed the point in the same way Aldebaran did.
Frankly, I’m rather disgusted by a couple people here who would deliberately mischaracterize what I said because they are spoiling for a fight. My point was that , while I applaud those who place a higher priority on musical ability, it’s still a decision rightly made by the casting director. How anybody could get from that to suggesting that I only think white people should get starring roles is beyond me. It’s too bad we can’t have a rational discussion without people flinging false charges of racism. 
I don’t understand how anyone can seriously contend that appearance has nothing to do with casting. As already pointed out, this would lead to absurdities like having Pavarotti play Little Orphan Annie. Perhaps we should go back to the days when women’s roles were played by castrati in drag.:rolleyes:
Tea Elle
Thanks for the clarification. I have seen him perform in a wheelchair, but perhaps I shouldn’t have used the word “confined”. I don’t believe that he is capable of playing the violin while standing. At any rate, the point stands either way.
Why I just can’t help thinking that her replacement sings with the voice power of Janet Jackson?