Fat soloists need not apply
NewsJessica Duchen has an eye-catching provocation in the former Independent newspaper, suggesting there is pressure on soloists to be sleek and slinky.
The strapline reads: ‘In all the concerts I’ve attended this year, I haven’t seen a single woman with an extra millimetre on the waistline. The pressure to be thin and beautiful is wasting time and talent.’ The rest is behind a paywall.
She has a point. If you’re a young pianist, Yuja is the one to match. Female violinists are under less pressure and cellists anyway play sitting down so their shape is unnoticed.
The trouble with all such generalisations is that there are exceptions. I know one brilliant young pianist who is so morbidly obese that I have seen surgeons approach her after a concert, offering to insert a bariatic band. There is no question that her size has imoacted her career, but I will always rush to hear her.
There are also some substantial gentleman pianists and at least one Russian exile who models herself on the late Tatiana Nikolaeva – proof, if ever there was, that portliness has nothing to do with performance.
I should also mention the prominent conductor whose weight balloons up and down, evidently out of control. Memo to orchestras: People with eating disorders need help. That applies also to near-anorexic soloists.
I’d like to know which overweight soloist lacking in physical fitness would endure today’s demands of a busy concert schedule, changing time zones and hopping from one plane to another.
But then read Karen Shaffer’s biography of violinist Maud Powell (1867-1920) and see how grueling train travel between concerts was circa 1895 to 1919, particularly since Powell gave concerts in towns that were hardly on the map, and “hotel” stays had their own hardships and issues. True, time zones did not change rapidly which is a big part of travel fatigue. I do not disagree that being physically fit is helpful to deal with the rigors of travel, although fitness and thinness are not necessarily the same thing.
Still as regards N.L.’s premise for the posting, it is fair to wonder whether a large-ish person such as Gina Bachauer would enjoy the same career today. I personally knew one contest-winning pianist who stopped getting return engagements when her weight ballooned, and she stopped looking anything like her sultry publicity photos. And then the drinking got worse which did not help.
A non issue. Commenting on artist’s weight however sets a dangerous precedent. Duchen seems to have time on her hands to be focusing on such arbitrary concerns.
By obvious extension, this applies to opera singers today, too. Thanks to the streaming video world, fat singers are now verboten. The days of park and bark from immense voices in immense packages are over.
Have you ever seen 9 sleek and slinky Valkyries?
The Opera isn’t over til…..
Gina Bachauer?
Footnote fodder: We owe to Charles Burney (“The Present State of Music in Germany,” 1773) the wholly unsubstantiated anecdote (via François Robert Laugier) that by 1756 (one year before his death) Domenico Scarlatti “was too fat to cross his hands as he used to do, so that these [sonatas] are not so difficult as his more juvenile works.”
Once again I am reminded of a line from GiGi ,sung by Maurice Chevalier. “I”m glad I’m not young anymore…” Thankfully, I am old enough to have heard and seen Montserrat Caballe, Jessye Norman, Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, Gianni Raimondi, and many other queen size greats with voices to match. I guess, they would not get a foot in the door these days. How much poorer opera would be without them.
Today there is nobody that even comes close to these overweight wonders.
Night at the opera is no longer worth the price of admission.