festive future
La Cieca hears that Angela Meade, triumphant in this summer’s Semiramide at Caramoor, has been invited back there in 2010 for her first Norma. Other future dates include Les Vêpres siciliennes in Vienna and a return engagement at the Met in Ernani. On the bill at Caramoor for 2011: that grandest of all grand operas, Guilliame Tell.
Update: Caramoor maestro Will “The Trill” Crutchfield just chimed in:
Semiramide was only a first hint of what this gal can do. Everybody should come next year and hold me accountable if I’m wrong. She hasn’t yet tapped her full capacities, but she will.
Hear hear, Krunoslav. Audiences appeared to embrace the likes of Pavarotti, Jessye Norman and Caballe on a massive scale that went way beyond the limits of the opera house, not to mention all those you mention who are enjoying a great relationship with audiences, apparently unimpeded by their sizes. Blythe, for instance, has always had just about the warmest, most enthusiastic ovation from the audience where ever I have seen her, including alongside La Voce in the recent Rusalka.
Arianna – I don’t know why Eaglen’s career has faltered, possibly something to do with a lack of a solid basic technique perhaps, or because she sounded like a train whistle, but that is speculation. I’ll venture though that your weight-related theory is also speculation, and one example isn’t a particularly strong argument against mine, given all the evidence to the contrary. I note you don’t even contradict my words about Voigt.
I think when people talk about singers whose weight has hindered his/her career, they are thinking of sharon sweet, alessandra marc, christine brewer (well, at last officially), etc. NOT that singers were necessarily unpresentable b/c of their weight.
scifisci — but you are right! They ARE unpresentable because
of their weight, and also because their excessive weight is
health-threatening and sooner or later the ravages of calories
take their toll on heart, lungs, blood chem. etc. It’s a sad thing.
50 Krunoslav – I have taken straight friends to the opera, and they have commented negatively about obese singers they see in the midst of a more ‘average’ sized cast. I’ve also often overheard such comments from audience members around me during intermissions (presumably of all orientations), so let’s not hang this on the self-hating gay community. I’ve heard it too much from the audience itself to blame administrators for creating a myth.
Yes, you mention several fine artists who are heavy and having successful careers, but how many of them (Heppner aside) have thriving careers in Europe? Why is, for example, Blythe singing regularly in places like Pittsburgh and Arizona rather than London, Paris, Vienna, and Barcelona when she is not at the Met? The singers you list are on par artistically with the (slimmer) Joyce DiDonato, Sondra Radvanovksy, Joseph Kaiser, Kyle Ketelsen, etc. yet it’s the latter who work consistently (not intermittently) at the top European houses as well as top American houses.
51 CK I was responding to your implication that weight loss results in vocal decline. True, the reason for Eaglen’s decline is speculation on my part, but do you really think weight had no role, both vocally and dramatically? Would you prefer an example of a singer who lost weight and sings well? I give you Renee Fleming, who was much larger in the early 90s. One can dislike her interpretations, but one can’t deny that her Marietta’s Lied at the Met shows that the voice and technique remain the same as before her weight loss.
Arianna @54 – At no stage did I wish to imply that weight loss leads to vocal decline. I was speaking very specifically about Voigt, who as we all know did not loose weight gradually, but very rapidly and with invasive abdominal surgery. In Voigt’s case, I would say that weight loss has quite clearly led to vocal decline, but only because of the manner in which she lost it, not because she lost it per se.
Regarding Eaglen, I have no idea if weight was connected to her vocal decline, and I don’t really see why we should assume it was. Purely vocally, why do you suppose it did contribute, when so many other singers manage to be large for their whole careers without it having any negative impact? And dramatically, whilst her size would obviously have limited her, voices in her fach are so rare that they get cast regardless.
I also seriously doubt whether Blythe’s career is focussed on the USA for any reason other than that this is how she prefers things. She’s appeared at the Royal Opera in Semele and Ballo at least, and surely she wasn’t the only option for either role – if the powers that be at the ROH didn’t want her because of her size, they wouldn’t have hired her.
I don’t see what Fleming has to do with this – she’s lost a few dress sizes thanks to the Atkins diet, but she was never anything approaching the size of these other singers we are discussing.