Take a look at this YouTube footage of the Irish mezzo soprano Tara Erraught, talking about her experiences of performing at a gala concert, and proving in just a few short moments of onstage coverage that a more stunningly vivacious, intelligent and communicative singer would be hard to find. The desire, as she puts it herself, to ‘tell stories’ through her music just explodes out of her. Her singing voice, it goes almost without saying, is effortlessly sublime.
To think of a musician of such high calibre and such obvious personal charisma having to read reviews of her recent Glyndebourne performance as Octavian in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier and see herself described – and this in the broadsheets – by people who are considered to be some of this country’s top music critics, variously as ‘a chubby bundle of puppy fat’ (Andrew Clark, FT), ‘a dumpy girl’ (Michael Church, Independent – only there’s no point in my linking to that review, because it has since been reworded), and ”unbelievable, unsightly and unappealing’ (Richard Morrison, The Times), is utterly shameful. ‘It’s hard to imagine this stocky Octavian as this willowy women’s plausible lover’, insists Andrew Clements of The Guardian.
As Jessica Duchen says in The Independent, ‘why shouldn’t the women in [Octavian’s] life be attracted to personality rather than height? Richard Jones’s production offers a bright, sassy, postmodern approach, ditching every one of its tradition’s sacred cows – Octavian included.’ She goes on to point out that ‘opera’s men do not face the same problem. Take the eponymous hero in Wagner’s Siegfried. Like Octavian, he is probably meant to be about 17. But we don’t generally hear complaints about the hefty Heldentenors who sing him not looking like petulant adolescents. Consider this at leisure.’
The sexist abuse – because I’m afraid that’s what it is – handed out to Erraught is distressing to read. It also highlights the continuing problem of sexism in classical music generally. It’s only a couple of months since we heard Vasili Petrenko, chief conductor of the RLPO, insist that ‘when women have families it is difficult to be as dedicated as is required in this business’ and ‘a sweet girl on the podium can make one’s thoughts drift towards something else’. There’s something seriously rotten in the fabric of the classical music world when a musician in such a senior role – and in all other respects immensely talented – feels that it’s normal and OK to express opinions that, had he actually stopped for a moment to think them through, he would surely have realised were not only offensive but poorly informed.
Similarly, I felt upset and dismayed when, just a couple of days ago, I happened to pick up a classical music magazine from a station news stand and the first thing to strike my eye was a double-page photo of the trumpet player Alison Balsom, in a gold off-the-shoulder dress, reclining on a sofa, hugging her instrument. Balsom is an amazing musician. Why then is she being marketed as a sexual commodity? Why are things like this still happening in classical music, not just occasionally but as a general rule?
Is classical music turning out to be one of the last bastions of this kind of conservatism, an arena in which it’s still perfectly permissible to criticise a woman for being too old, too heavy, not photogenic enough? As someone for whom classical music has been a hugely important part of her life since the age of twelve, I find that thought profoundly appalling. If classical music wants to stop being thought of by most of the world as a weird, stuffy, outmoded culture where everyone speaks in plummy accents, where you have to know all the secret passwords to gain access, and that no one under the age of sixty is even remotely interested in anyway, then it’s time for its movers and shakers to damn well wise up.