An opera singer’s backlash wasn’t just sexism

[longship]

6. Gees! Apparently nobody in opera has ever seen or heard any of the following women sing...

Kirsten Flagstad:


Jessie Norman:


Birgit Nilsson:


Joan Sutherland:


Marilyn Horne:


All rather large women. And beautiful, too.

It seems that nobody asked them about their figures. It was all about their voices.

Given that both Flagstad and Nilsson sung Bruunhilde in Götterdämmerung, Wagner's final opera in his epic tetralogy, where Bruunhilde is required to be on stage for hours, and her last scene is the most strenuous of all, leaping onto a fiery pier on a horse as she sings plein jeu, I would say that it very well might take some significant vigor to accomplish that role. Indeed it does.

Yes, we love the petite mezzo roles. But give me a full soprano any day. And I do not care about their waist lines. The art is the music.