Opera singers ‘face a mental health crisis’
OperaSingers’ agents tell us of a tsunami of depression that is sweeping through the profession. Opera budgets have been cut, contracts arrive late and the basic security of the profession is under threat. One agent says she has four singers presently receiving treatment for depression.
The conversations were sparked by the suicide, on Tuesday in Korea, of the popular tenor Sehoon Moon. Sehoon was 39.
He was working with Glyndebourne, Malmo and opera houses in France and had every reason to feel confident. But he had given up his residency in Milan during Covid and had failed to find a partner to accompany him through life.
‘He was an angel, everybody loved him,’ said a close associate, but depression is an insidious condition and there is often no swift remedy.
Unnecessarily tragic. My thoughts go out to his family and friends. The profession is a rat and snake pit of competitiveness, backstabbers, nepotism, misogyny, lookism, favoritism and whatever else. Not until this is acknowledged will there be any hope of change. Add to all that ever waning interest in the art form coupled with decreased funding and you have an art form on its last breath. Frankly, I would advise aspiring singers, given the long years of arduous and expensive training with absolutely no guarantee of “making it” or even of basic, living wage employment, to look instead into, I don’t know, nannying pets or frying fries at McDonald’s or whatever.
A.L. Perhaps you could enlighten us about your insightful knowledge of the world of opera and how it is different to other fields.
It’s hard to tell, this can be an opera thing, or this can be a Korean thing, because (quote) “South Korea’s suicide rate has nearly doubled over the past two decades. With 25.2 deaths per 100,000 population, suicide was the sixth leading cause of death in 2022, following diseases such as cancer and heart disease.”