Welcome to the age of opera in HD.
Performances are regularly broadcast live to movie theaters all over the world. Opera companies increasingly engage directors with film and theater backgrounds who expect performers to look like the characters they portray. The result has been an escalation in pressure for opera singers to get their bodies into shape for the sake of appearance, with little discussion of the impact it has on their singing.
The opera industry does itself and its singers a terrible disservice when it regards physical appearance and vocal prowess as though they are somehow unrelated. The pressure to slim down or bulk up leads singers to prioritize appearance over the integrity of their instruments and risk engaging in unhealthy diet and exercise strategies. It represents a failure to understand singing as first and foremost a rigorous athletic endeavor.
I frequently hear singers frame questions about fitness in terms of the aesthetic they wish to achieve:
“Can I lose weight without negatively impacting my voice?”
“Can I get six-pack abs without messing up my breathing?”
My response is to point out that form follows function, so a sport-specific fitness regimen designed to optimize singers’ bodies for peak performance in singing will likely also yield the aesthetic results they desire. Conversely, a program prioritizing weight loss and/or muscle gain over developing the specialized flexibility, strength, and stability required for excellence in singing can indeed negatively impact the voice.
So ingrained is our culture’s emphasis on appearance, however, that I have found it extremely challenging to shift the conversation from one about aesthetics to one about prowess. It seems there is no escaping the conditioning. Even given the breadth of my knowledge and experience in fitness and nutrition, I’d be lying if I said I never felt an urge to pursue a slimmer profile for its own sake.
When I worked full-time as a fitness trainer, one piece of advice that I often received from colleagues and managers went something like this: “Give your clients what they need, but package it in what they say they want.” What they meant was that when, as happened with some frequency, a woman approaches me tugging at the underside of her arms and asking, “Can you help me get rid of this?” my response should essentially be “Sure! Here’s a routine that will give you firm, shapely arms”—but then I would teach her a comprehensive regimen to improve her overall body composition, hoping that she’ll stick with it if I continually point out how each component of her regimen will yield the arms of her dreams.
While the regimen I would design for her actually is the means to slimmer arms, my response is not the one she wanted or expected. Nor is it the answer that I instinctively wished to provide.
• She wanted one exercise that will tighten and slim a specific body part, in isolation.
• I wanted to educate her about how women’s bodies tend to store fat in the upper arms and that reducing it requires increasing lean muscle mass throughout the body rather than specifically targeting the arms. I wanted her to appreciate that building strength in her chest and back will also strengthen her arms, but that trying to spot-sculpt her triceps without priming the larger muscles of her torso could lead to injury. I wanted to motivate her to gain strength, stability, coordination, and grace rather than body-shaming herself about the things she wants to “get rid of.” But if I started getting into all of that, she’d probably glaze over before I’d completed a couple of sentences.
While I wrote this book because I want you to regard yourselves as athletes and your bodies as instruments, I am aware that many of you may have picked up a copy because you want to look good in HD. But I’m okay with that, because if you consistently follow the workout and nutrition strategies I’ve laid out, you will likely succeed in meeting your aesthetic goals while also promoting optimal function of your instrument.
My hope is that, as you draw closer to realizing your aesthetic goals, you will also begin to identify as an athlete. That you will exult in your increased energy and strength, just as you take pleasure in the skill and power with which you deploy your voice. That you will head for the gym not just because you want to look your best onstage, but also because you love the way it makes you feel.
I believe that as more singers identify as athletes, we will begin to effect a necessary movement in our industry.
We will educate the greater opera community that there is such a thing as an optimal instrument and that aesthetic concerns must take a backseat to its cultivation. We will promote a broad awareness of what it means to simultaneously be and play an instrument. Objectification will cease because our bodies and our voices will be recognized as one and the same. Our unique appearances will be celebrated rather than measured against irrelevant aesthetic standards.
Our voices and our bodies will serve as radiant examples of form following function.