An opera singer’s backlash wasn’t just sexism

[ismnotwasm]

10. Thank you all for your replies

I was under the impression that many opera singers were larger people, and this took me aback. I'm quite excited to see my first opera, but admit to being saddened this ridiculousness has invaded the art. I know very little about opera, other than to be fully appreciated by a complete newbie, live is the best experience.

This paragraph caught my eye:

It’s her query that really gets me about all of this. You bet that this is about a bunch of men deciding that a female performer did not meet their aesthetic expectations, and yeah, that’s what sexism and sizeism look like, all over. But it’s also about the absurd laziness on rampant display at the top newspapers in a major world city for the arts. It’s about the fact that these critics barely could bother themselves to construct any substantial ideas about Erraught’s performance because they were too busy amusing themselves with references to puppy fat. This is what an artist gets for putting herself out there, for being, as my friend says, open and exposed and vulnerable. And that’s at the professional critic level – let’s not even bother addressing what happens when a person treads into the peanut gallery of social media. You pour your soul into your work and you get back a chorus of negative comments about the easiest to observe, most superficial aspects of yourself – from people who were paid to write them. Why are we doing this, again? And what’s the difference between a London opera critic and a random YouTube troll anymore?

I hope there is a backlash over this so young singers can evolve with the confidence they need. I think these shallow critics may have messed with the wrong art form.