#and…even though there’s no weighins perse. opera is hella fatphobic

[terrainofheartfelt]

wait why do they not let opera singers start singing until they’re older???? like i kinda understand the logic with dance/sports - people’s physical abilities do tend to wain as they get older and experience more injuries (although the weigh in thing is absolutely FUCKED, especially for ballet and gymnastics), but i can’t even fathom how being older would necessarily make you a better singer. more experienced probably, but how is a singer supposed to get experience if they can’t work in the field at all before then??? aren’t there any roles for younger people in opera by virtue of the characters they’re singing for??

Hi ty for asking!

I guess I should probably start with a clarification, in opera, you can sing starting in your late teens on, but you are in training for several years, in school, in trade training programs, and so you aren’t professionally singing leading roles at the top of the marquee until your 30s at LEAST. So there’s multiple reasons for that — and bear with me because it’s been like 6 years since my pedagogy class, but the main reason one can’t typically jump from getting their bachelors straight into professional mainstage classical singing is that the voice is like, the last thing to complete aging in your body. You know how your frontal lobe doesn’t finish developing until you’re in your mid20s? It’s the same with your voice.

So your vocal folds—the bit of anatomy in your larynx where the magic happens—is legit an incredible piece of engineering, it’s folds (the colloquial term is chords, but folds is more accurate) of tissue, that, when you speak and sing, kind of…flap, oscillate together at high-frequency—that’s where the sound comes from, and with singing, it’s at a much higher intensity than speaking. And before the voice finishes aging, those folds are — for lack of a better term — soft, and pliable, and highly subject to injury.

Sidebar: That’s why if you ask any classically trained singer about those tv reality talent show children that “sing opera” they get incensed, because physiologically speaking, that kid is shredding their voice by forcing it to do something it anatomically can’t yet. It’s NOT impressive, it’s destructive.

Another sidebar: there’s a video out there somewhere of Steve Tyler from Aerosmith singing with a scope in his throat so you can see his folds vibrating and it’s fucking GNARLY. singing is intense. He’s awesome.

In your mid20s, those folds ossify into sturdier cartilage, which means the voice is hardier and has more stamina and strength.

So, knowing all that: classical singing is hard. It’s ATHLETIC. It burns calories! my old voice teacher used to say. It takes lots of breath control, lots of practice, and years building up healthy technique — technique that prevents injury and fatigue.

And, this is opera we’re talking about. There’s no amplification. No microphones. A voice has to be heard over an entire orchestra, you need training and stamina to make that happen. So it takes 4 years of training, but practically 6, bc most gigs won’t even look at you without a masters. And even then, you might be benched for awhile.

And it’s also all on a spectrum too, depending on the range and size of a voice (and different voice types are suited to different musical eras and roles) like higher, smaller voices mature in less time and are therefore hire-able in less time. Like, that post was a joke, but they were pretty accurate, dramatic baritones and basses are not taken seriously at all really until at least they’re 30s, and are probs not debuting until their 40s. Me, I’m on that end of the spectrum, my voice is low, and big. The analogy my teacher used was “Mac truck” my technique lessons were about “learning to drive the mac truck.” So I knew from the get go that it was gonna take my voice a WHILE to finish cooking. My coach told me once that one day after I turn 25, everything will magically be easier (vocal technique wise). But then I turned 25 in the middle of a pandemic and had been decidedly Not Singing for several months…so. Though, that Christmas when I had to sing in church, it felt real good. Better than I had anticipated…

Another sidebar: and singing is so so so much more personal than any other kind of music making, because you are the instrument, the instrument is in you, and it’s organic, and no other type of musician has to reckon with that kind of intimacy and change. You don’t have people sitting around waiting for their oboe to ripen. (Not to diminish the hard work instrumentalists put in like damn I wish I’d stuck it out with piano maybe I’d be happier)

So, there’s a real reason for it, but, there’s also a lot of pearl-clutching in the business about what young voices and young, dramatic voices (that’s what I have, a dramatic voice) should and shouldn’t do. And there’s several conceits of the business that are, to put it simply, absolutely fucked. Like, you do your six years of school, but if you go straight through, then you’re still 23, and unless you’re a perfect tiny Mozart soubrette, you’re not really finished cooking. The bridge between school and singing grown up lead roles is supposed to be apprenticeships, but those are so Fucked. They’ve become less about hiring quality singers and training them—hiring voices with potential and giving them lessons and concert performances and letting them learn roles without the strain of performing on a huge stage with an orchestra—and more about hiring cheap labor to round out casts by throwing them bit parts, small roles that only have a few lines here and there—those are the roles for younger people you asked about. Comprimario is the industry term. But companies are only hiring people they know they cam put on a stage immediately, there’s no interest in training anymore, so smaller voices are fine working that way, but a girl like me gets nowhere. I did an audition for a company where I’d worked before and had a great relationship with all the people, and when I walked out the door—after absolutely crushing it—one of them said “that was great. it’s a shame we have nothing to give her.” (I know this because the person they were talking to is my best friend). and that’s not even getting into the fucking extortion that is pay to sings and application fees and audition fees. One’s only hope as a young dramatic voice in the apprenticeship world, really, is to either go to Germany—where they are much less pearl clutchey about age—or land where there’s a director or conductor who cares enough about your potential to keep hiring you, even if they can’t “use” you in their season. And at this point in time, I got neither of those.

So, with all that, the question is: is opera even worth it? And tbh the pandemic answered that question for me before I could, but…fuck, somedays (like now since I’m writing this ask about it) I miss it. Like, it feels like a part of myself is missing from me. Because damn, there’s nothing like it, singing. Not even the full shebang with orchestras and costumes but just singing arias in my best friends’ living room while we’re drunk on two buck chuck…there’s nothing like it. 

tldr: it’s a combination of a real, physiological reason, combined with the fact that the industry is fucked, and said industry has cards stacked against people who aren’t socio-economically capable of waiting for their voice to age.