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Classical Music Fakery (Part 2)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CLASSICAL CON BLASTO blog
A few seasons back, the classical-music community was a-twitter when it was announced that Deborah Voigt had been sacked from a Covent Garden production of Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” because the very full-figured soprano didn’t fit into the slinky black dress that was “essential” to the production.
A few Voigt fans protested mightily, and music critics at should-have-known-better publications like the NY Times ran lengthy articles on the topic, addressing it from many angles — our obsession with body type, the cultural biases against fat people (and especially over weight women), the sad state of European high-concept opera production and, mostly, about poor, poor Debbie Voigt — dubbed “Planet Debbie” in the savage world of opera chat rooms — whose career was, uh, skyrocketing.
Turned out that the “little black dress scandal” was the best thing that happened to Voigt. It broke just as she released a new CD — which immediately went to the top of the Billboard classical charts — and it served as a preview to her decision to have gastric-bypass surgery to reduce her weight. “60 Minutes” and the rest of the media lapped it up, although some of us in the minority wondered why there were no contracts offered as proof of the dismissal, no lawsuits, no apparent hard feelings between the supposedly humiliated Voigt and London’s Royal Opera House.
Well, you could see this one coming, as reported today on www.musicalamerica.com:
“Little Black Dress Tale a ‘Bunch of Rubbish’
Apr 4, 2007
by Keith Clarke
ROH Music Director Antonio Pappano announces season, says Voigt story was media hype for her new album…
Asked whether he was saying that the singer had lied about the episode, Pappano said: ‘She says it was about the black dress, but that’s not true. When you hire anybody to sing a role, you do take into consideration what they look like, how they move, how they act. It’s not just as simple as saying that somebody is too heavy for a role or not.’ “
So who fell for this in the first place? Are classical-music critics really that gullible? Probably no more than the general public. As a profession, however, we’re vulnerable to deception because we’ve bought into — and helped create — the notion that classical music is pure, driven exclusively by art, and thus unsullied by the vulgar pressures of commerce and scam marketing.
Add Debbie’s Dress to the Joyce Hatto scandal — where several notable critics praised CDs attributed to a sick and elderly English woman pianist, although the disks turned out to be plagarized recordings made, in fact, by established stars — and you can almost hear the balloon of naivete deflating.
Will Deborah Voigt (and her press agents) now be taken to task for the deception? Or is our culture so saturated with high-profile liars and the lies they tell that no one cares? Is there no penalty for spitting into the community well?
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