Optional cuts
Which Metropolitan Opera diva has eased her transition into the visual-intensive Gelb era with the assistance of a plastic surgeon recently featured in W magazine and the New York Post? This Park Avenue doctor's "short scar" facelifts promise a dramatically rejuvenated jawline with shorter recovery time and minimal scarring -- just the thing for those high-definition closeups!
POSTED at
12:28 PM
41 Comments:
For some odd reason, Andrea Gruber comes to mind. I dont know why...
thats why AG could not perform this weekend?
renee?
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The only HD bcast still to come is Trittico, which features Guleghina and Frittoli. I would think Guleghina is the more obvious candidate for "a little work".
Probably Guleghina, since her chin, is a bit fat.
With the mention of "W" magazine, I wondered if this might be Susan Graham. Didn't she sing at W's last inauguration?
(Not that she needs a facelift, as she continues to look strikingly beautiful.)
Since we are dishing out gossip on our divas today, there's a high-res pic of The Beautiful Voice in my blog, (just scroll down the post on Gheorghiu's Manon), seated next to her is her beloved, the much, much, much younger Ward Stare. Stare's a trombonist here in Chicago. This must be the reason why La Diva Renee never seems to have a bad day--since she's always smiling whenever I see her. Good for Renee! Ah, the power of love.
Wouldn't a Face-lift fuck up the facial accoustic?
BT, the short answer, I think, is no. The resonating chamber that really matters is the throat and mouth. The sympathetic resonance in the mask matters when it comes to technique, that notion of "placement." When a singer's got optimal placement, she may feel buzzing in the face. But I recall from William Vennard's text (in voice pedagogy back in, ahem, 1984) that those chambers don't directly contribute to the sound. I believe it was tested by filling singer's sinuses with liquid and then recording the sound so it could be compared to the same singer w/ empty sinuses.
But I don't know if that has been supplanted by more recent research. In any case, if there's call for concern, I think it would be in altering the muscles, or in having the muscles' responses altered in response to an altered face.
LPR
If Joan Sutherland could go through all the sinus and dental surgery that she went through and still sound as fabulous as she did, I don't think a little outside work is going to impact the sound.
All I can say Is that I remember Anna Russell blaming an accident where she took a hockey stick to the face and broke a bunch of bones for damiging her career as it "ruined her accoustic". I'm not making this up, you know!
i'm sure if you damage the actual bone structure of the nasal cavity something negative could result with respect to resonance and placement, but superficial procedures should ostensibly have no effect.
This is so pathetic.
In 10 years, the Met is going to hire singers only with a Body Mass Index of at least 20. This will happen because sopranos will be hysterical about their weight and start to diet violently. Some of them might die onstage will singing let say a Brünnhilde or Turandot or Abigaille, and then Gelb will declare a minimal BMI for singers. So sad!
On the other hand, I wonder if Gelb is going to ask Mattila to wear brown contact lenses to sing Tosca.
Oh, for god's sakes can we have a LITTLE faith in the man?
"You can sing without a voice but you can't sing without teeth" - La Caballe
Actually many beloved divas from the past have had a little work done. I have been told that Magda Olivero and Renata Tebaldi had face lifts. Everyone knows about Anna Moffo and her before and after nose. Check out her profile on the early TV broadcasts of "Sonnambula" and "Madama Butterfly" and her 1958 Voice of Firestone appearance and compare with her 60's and 70's work.
As far back as the late 19th century, Adelina Patti covered her wrinkles with laquer so that she looked like a cracking china doll.
To keep on our favorite whipping post diva, I suspect that Renee has had work done. Specifically, the summer before she did "Rodelinda" at the Met. She seemed to have reduced her weight at a spa and gotten a lift. She was incredibly svelte at the premiere of "Rodelinda" and the face and jaw looked chiseled and tighter than they had in years.
I have been told that certain ageing divos also have had surgery. Some claim that Domingo had face lifts and Alfredo Kraus...
This is hardly a new or unique phenomenon.
Didn't Nellie Melba die as a result of a botched face lift?
And, as far as I'm concerned, Callas and the legendary tapeworm trumps all in terms of self-abuse in the name of beauty.
I adore and live for opera, but why do most of the bloggers here seem to think that the art form exists outside of the ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY. Have you all seen the foreheads at the Met lately...botox seems to be de rigeur. So what's wrong with a little tightening up.
I cannot prove this but I would swear that Mattila has had a tummy tuck or really gotten into pilates. I remember a definite stomach pooch when she was doing the Flimm Fidelio. Cut to 3 or 4 years later and she was showing a fabulous stomach in Salome.
I mean it's just business people. As a person who has to make a MAJOR effort to make it to the gym everyday I certainly wouldn't want to be a singer and have an 80% judgement on my looks and 20% judgement on the voice. It is unfair. But opera has been trending that way unfortunately. I think it would have to take a singer with a truly EXCEPTIONAL voice to come along and not have to worry about looks. My god look at the drastic measures Debbie Voigt took. I am sure that Ms. Brewer will be doing something soon too.
Even LA CALLAS was succeptible - or we wouldn't have the fat/skinny Callas voice discussions. And really would she have become the legend that she is if she hadn't racheted up the GLAMOUR FACTOR?
I suppose that many divas had something done and I find it perfectly fine, the thing is that I doubt Tebaldi had a face lift because that would have had a positive effect on her career or because she wanted to overthrown Callas at La Scala or anything like it. I suppose she did it, if she ever did it, as a personal choice for herself.
I knew Kraus very well, and I doubt he had something done. The same goes for Domingo... but still, there are people that claim that he is older than he says he is, which is also wrong.
I am going to say something that many of you won't like but I'm going to say it anyway. Here it goes......first of all, I know many sopranos of large voice type who have the body of a thin woman. I have known them to be discriminated against b/c of THEIR size. Meaning, it wasn't really considered that a woman with a big voice could possibly inhabit a small frame. It was assumed that she was pushing or trying to sing repetoire that she could never handle. After all, "it ain't over til the fat lady sings", was the general mentality of most of the public. To this day, the general public still associates opera singers as being large breat-plated women. I am happy to see that everyone recognizes that large voices can come in small packages. I think it is nice that the trend is shifting. Before, if you were thin you were considered only for the engenue roles and the soubrette roles. It is nice to sort-of have the freedom to go in many directions and that your size isn't a hindrance to what type of literature you can sing. Having said all that, I think it is also sad that it seems to be stricly about size. I think we are trending towards a more visually acturate idea of portraying the character in the most realistic light. Gone are the days of large Butterflys, Mimis, or Violettas. It is a difficult argument to undertake b/c I see both sides of the equation. I see what Gelb is trying to do and I agree with it wholeheartedly. We are as much a visual art as we are an auditory art and I think that it is a good trend to want to make it as accurate visually as you can, but I also think that the best voice should be chosen at the end of the day, not the one that fits into a size 6 dress just b/c they fit into a size 6 dress. Ok. Agree or disagree, I don't care.
I would like to comment about Ms. Mattila - I PERSONALLY know for a fact that she WORKED HER BUTT OFF to get in shape for the Salome. She dieted (smartly) and worked with a personal trainer, and spent many many long hours in dance rehearsal working on the dance of the veils. She did not go in for an easy fix - she ate sensibly and worked out like a demon, and it paid off.
The whole FAT thing really drives me crazy.
I think that all of us should support our beloved singers in being healthy - onstage and off. And for some of them, that means losing weight. And for some of them it might mean GAINING weight. I know a couple of young singers who are really starving themselves trying to be thin, when they would sing SO much better a few pounds heavier. Now, that doesn't mean that they would sing better FAT, it just means that being skinny isn't healthy either. And I think that Mattila is a good example - she's not stick thin, but she's fit, and has a nice shape, and sings great, and moves well, and is believeable as a younger person, because she is lithe enough to pull it off. And I bet her singing would suffer if she lost 20 pounds, and it would probably suffer if she gained 50!! Everyone should be able to run up and down a flight of stairs and be able to sing a few notes, and if you can't, then you're OUT OF SHAPE and has nothing to do with what you look like.
It's unfortunate that we human beings allow physical attributes to so heavily influence our judgement, but I think it's hardwired into our brain. Anyway, whether you think we should try to ignore that part of our nature or not, you would probably agree that seeing a Calaf singing "O divina bellezza" to a Turandot that looks like a stout young elephant would be at least somewhat ironically amusing, even to the most enlightened of minds. Not that I think all people who take to the stage should be supermodels, but I think physical appearance does affect credibility in the role after a certain point. For example, I saw this made-for-TV movie version of R&H's Cinderella where they'd cast a white actress as one step-sister and a black actress as the other stepsister. That just came off as laughably over-PC, though you can certainly argue that an actress's race should not affect what roles she can play.
At least Netrebko could not be one of them, for the chagrin of her haters! As far as Gruber, I wish she had a vocal-cords lifting instead. Her Turandot at the Met was wobbly(NY Times). In actuality, it was atrocious. Even with marketing trends on physical appearance, a soprano with a unique voice and solid technique would always be in demand. Not all pretty faces and skinny bodies have achieved stardom.
SugarM-
I did say that I had NO PROOF...so I guess it was the pilates. Good for her.
anyone go to the Tucker Auditions yesterday/today?
Though I agree that we're possibly in peril of having looks be more important than the voice, I don't understand how working singers (as in, no kind of day job, only singing) can't stay in some kind of shape.
When I had the privilege of singing with major houses, I LOST weight and inches every time. The reason? I wasn't sitting on my butt all day at a desk - or a hotel room. Thanks to AGMA, the company could only use me for 6 hours a day. There was ample time for working out, walking everywhere and shopping for healthy eats. Other colleagues were also making ample use of various local gyms. There's plenty of time outside of rehearsal to work on music as well as one's physical health.
Divina Due has a great point, though. While coaching Wagner/Strauss at a major house, I was flabbergasted when my coach said I had to work on my presentation in order to enhance my size. He was concerned that I might actually seem to petite for the roles I was presenting. At 5'5" and a size 14, I was stunned. "They're used to seeing big girls in these roles." This guy knows his stuff too. Granted, this was 5 years ago and the tide is fast changing. Still, it was astonishing advice after spending most of my singing life being discriminated against because I wasn't a size 8. With two separate small companies, I was told that my size made it more difficult or impossible to rent costumes. Believe me, that hurt, especially when, in one case, I was only a size 12 and in the best shape of my life.
AlfredoKraus openly discussed his plastic surgery. Placido doesn't but if you look at videos in recent years you can literally see the before and after shots, (He has to try and look the age he claims to be!) Scotto has had a few nips and tucks and one can even see the pre-surgery Moffo in some early firestone television specials. So what is the big deal. Gruber definitely could use the surgery, but first she needs the vocal coach more desperately.
I don't think plastic surgery is always about what would be good for a singer's career. For better or worse, many people have surgery to feel better about themselves and do so for purely personal reasons. Yes, our culture is extremely beauty/youth oriented, but our culture is a lot of things that would take a lot to change (capitalistic, wasteful/disposable, ego-centric, etc).
I do agree that opera should be more about the voice than the body. But how many great voices do we have today compared to 50-100 years ago? Very few. If we don't have the great voices anymore, we might as well have something nice to look at on stage. If we had a singers whose voices are truly superhuman as we did in the past, then looks might not matter as much. I'd rather watch a Caballe or Nilsson on stage than thin, pretty singer with a mediocre voice. But we don't have Caballe or Nilsson today.
Besides, being overweight is one thing, but being morbidly obese is another. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't radical procedures like gastric bypass (i.e. Voigt) reserved for people whose health is at risk because of the weight?
And who was La Cieca talking about? Does anyone know?
Gastric bypass is meant only for the seriously obese - sky-high BMI or, I've heard, at least 60 lbs. overweight. To steal from your post, Caballe would be a candidate but not Nilsson.
Speaking of Divas and plastic surgery, does anyone know if Cecilia Bartoli has had a boob job? Comparing the way she looks in her early 90s Decca film "A Partrait" with the photos of her on the cd "Opera Proibita," she looks a lot smaller.
I didn't mean to imply that Nilsson needed gastric bypass, or any surgery for that matter. I was just saying that she was certainly no pixie. Hands down, a vocal goddess for sure. But place her next to someone like Netrebko or Dessay, and there's no denying she isn't quite the wilting flower the latter two are.
Joshua:
La Cieca thinks the smaller chestal area on La Bartoli is a combination of her being a bit slimmer now than she was 10 years ago, a very well-fitting dress and corset, plus expert PhotoShopping of the "Proibita" album cover. A candid photo of Bartoli taken about the same time reveals that she is still naturally buxom.
I think the whole idea of the gastric bypass is another blog altogether.
As far as the facelift is concerned, my best is on RF. She has lost a lot of weight from the 90s and she isn't 30 anymore. Take a look at her Otello video with PD and you'll see the dramatic difference. I imagine she has nothing to fill out her wrinkles now.
While I disagree that the topic of gastric bypass is "another blog altogether" (or was it stated somewhere that the responses must be limited to plastic surgery concerning only the face?), I would also bet the singer La Cieca was referring to was RF.
Fleming was very svelte in the Volpe Gala. But I noticed some thickness around the waist in Onegin cinecast. Not that I care either way who's had work done and who hasn't.
Though never truly heavy, RF is certainly much slimmer now. In her defense, though, that Met "Otello" was recorded only a few months after giving birth to her younger daughter. if memory serves, Vaness was originally cast but suffered a back injury during rehearsal. On went her cover and the rest is history.
In my opinion, it caught Fleming at the perfect moment. She then sang with radiant purity in a deeply touching performance. I really miss that artist. If only she'd find her way back...
For me, her Tatiana was the best thing I've heard from her since her Nozze Countess in the Met telecast of serveral years ago. So, I'm hopeful for the future. It'll be interesting to hear how her Violetta sounds next season (to see if it's stylistically any better than her last go at it).
You know, I guess that I am one of those people who enjoys people for who they are, and don't necessarily find aging in a person a sign of unattractiveness. Truthfully, I think some women, and men, are more attractive with a few extra pounds than without. And look at all the statues from Rome and Greece- as natural as they come- and you'll see that women were admired for having curves and bottom and bust.
Opera has always had some beautiful ladies and handsome men, and its not wrong to want the combination today. However what has always been a pleasure for me in opera is that beautiful voices come in all shapes and sizes, and so what is on stage is more 'real to me, than in most other art forms.
Having said that, I for the life of me do NOT understand how anyone except the truly ill get as gigantic as someone like Voight did. Or Marc. Or a number of other singers. I will of course tolerate it for a truly great voice, like Marc has, but I wonder how, when you are working so hard you manage to get that big, or stay that big.
Being overweight and fit is one thing, but there is a limit. How can you breath? How can you move?
Maybe someone can enlighten me on this.
As far as having face lifts, well, I think doing surgery that isn't necessary for your health is an unwarranted risk. I know of few people, including singers, who look so scary that they should contemplate it for their careers.
It doesn't matter the opera is inside the entertainment industry, this is about the truisms of life, and everyone being born perfect isn't reality.
Shakespeare has a wonderful sonnet talking about this.
I just saw a picture of AG,
http://66.187.153.86/Imgs/Turandot0607.08.jpg
and thought, that is such a plastic surgery nose! So I went looking for a 'before' picture, which was not hard to find:
http://www.imgartists.com/?page=artist&id=76
Is that also what a 'rejuvinated jawline' looks like?
I have to say I don't know why people do that to themselves. Whatever flaws they may have imagined having, they end up looking more marked afterward, in my opinion.
La Cieca, please tell us the real answer!
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