Further thoughts on Tara Erraught

Of course, my first concern was that a casting director would let a beluga like Erraught anywhere near the public eye. But more fears crept in on the heels of Wendy’s piece, which alleges that “bodies don’t figure into a review unless they’re written into the script, or somehow help or hinder an actor’s expression of his or her character.”

Judging production elements is one thing, Wendy says, but singers and actors live in their whole bodies: They don’t leave those bodies on the stage, and critics shouldn’t fantasize about actors’ bodies as if they were an army of Mr. Potato Heads with interchangeable parts.

It’s not the critic’s job “to ruminate on whether or not [a performer’s body] appeals to you offstage or violates expectations you brought with you before you ever took your aisle seat,” Wendy finishes.

Saved by the horseshoe

Naturally, I frowned. Wendy (full disclosure: a friend and colleague) has a lot of readers, and I worried that her piece might actually have influenced the world’s commentary on other people’s bodies. Would no one make a stand for the status quo, the tried-and-true truth that a medium-large person is indeed a figurative and literal elephant in the room?

Fortunately, BSR’s founder and my colleague Dan Rottenberg was there to reassert the natural order of things.

Who knows what would have happened if someone had not stepped in to tell a true story, from the front lines of 1960s-era national media, about how a female horseshoe-pitching champion was judged by an editor on her appearance and not her skills?

I was blown away not only by the incisive originality of this story, but also its relevance to a discussion of a modern opera star.

It starts when the fat lady sings

Dan is never afraid to tell it like it is, and he also remembers the time he and his dad saw the 300-pound Rita Hunter sing Norma at the Met:

“She was so huge that her bulk overwhelmed everything else about the performance — her voice, the music, the story, the sets, everything,” he wrote. The whole audience was “sniggering.” It was all anyone could talk about at intermission.

Now, I’m not on board with everything Dan says. I won’t be satisfied with his point about how good-looking the people on Good Morning America are until we can hire excavators with enough skill to unearth the hosts’ faces from their on-camera makeup.

But in general, I get Dan’s point, and I’m glad he spoke up. I watched a video of the stunningly mellifluous Erraught in her controversial Rosenkavalier performance while I ate a cup of Zsa’s Salted Caramel ice cream this afternoon and realized that Erraught’s figure resembles my own. In fact, if I were to gain about 20 pounds, I myself would be two-thirds the size of Rita Hunter in Norma — those of you who are into that sort of thing (math and/or curvaceous women) can run the numbers.

If a single 300-pound woman can single-handedly overwhelm every visual, technical, and auditory element of the decked-out Metropolitan Opera stage, imagine what happens when I walk into a Starbucks, sans libretto, music, costume, or set. I have to carry a roll of duct tape with me everywhere just so I can fix people’s dropped jaws.

Adieu, Alaina

Right now, I have no doubt that you, BSR reader, are going through a moment much like my own discovery of the Grammy-winning singer Adele. When you began reading this article, you were just like me on that night a few years ago when I was riding home from the gym, and I heard “Rolling in the Deep” on the radio for the first time.

What a voice, I thought. I Googled Adele to find more — and discovered the bodacious size hiding behind her radio vocals. Similarly, you innocently began reading this article under the assumption that a person of standard 21st-century western attractiveness was at the keyboard and then were gobsmacked with the awful truth about my body. I swore never to sing “Set Fire to the Rain” in the shower because of Adele’s grotesque size, and I assume you’ll likewise skip all my bylines henceforth.

There are a lot of tall, big-boned people in my family, and I can personally attest to the shock and awe of a 300-pound performer in a space much smaller than the Met.

Crushing the stage

Last weekend, my dad, a 6’4” former hockey player and amateur bodybuilder, had a stand-up comedy routine booked at the DC Improv dinner lounge, but when the emcee announced him and everyone saw his size, there was a stampede for the doors. People were throwing tables over the bar to make room, and I think a couple of the servers slipped in the spilled beer and were trampled to death.

That’s why I’m so glad some writers are still willing to speak up when others (despite clear evidence from the 1960s that politically correct views on people’s body size have yet to take root) suggest that we might be able to separate critical commentary on talent from judgment of physical appearance. When it comes to dialogues on body image, I hope someone will always have the courage to iterate the status quo, and remind girls like me of what everyone’s really thinking as I go about my career.