# You Look Like an Opera Singer



## Lunasong (Mar 15, 2011)

A delightful blog post by Rhoslyn Jones:

http://msinthebiz.com/2013/05/13/you-look-like-an-opera-singer/

Sample:

_Here are the top five questions to come out of the mouths of curious individuals:

"Can your voice break glass?"_

No.

_"Don't you have to be, like, really fat to be an Opera Singer?"_

Nope.

_"Can you sing something for me right now?"_

I could, but I'm not going to.

_"It must be wonderful to do something that you love and are passionate about right?"_

Yes.

_"I just went to an Il Divo Concert! Don't you love them?"_

Inside answer: I'd rather remove my own spleen with a dull butter knife than go near that concert.

Outside answer: I love that YOU love them and that they're introducing you to Classical music! Ever been to an opera? It's pretty rad!

(Disclaimer: I don't EVER judge these curious people. I am entitled to my own opinions about Il Divo but I make a concerted effort to not impose any operatic snobbery on an innocent individual who is merely trying to make a musical/personal connection. There's no harm in that. I welcome it. Talk to me…I'll chat your ear off about the coolness of all kinds of music all day long.)


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Ha, I feel so culturally irrelevant, i've heard the name Il Divo but i've never listened to them. They are apparently a British band with no British members unless you count Simon Bowel and they sing pop songs, mostly American, in Italian, and in a faux-operatic, histrionic style. Pass the butter knife Ms Jones when you are done with it.

I wonder if all the opera singers who actually can break glass with their voices are kidnapped early on by a shadowy government agency for some kind of psychological warfare purposes. Il Divo are just the commercial arm.


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

I just listened to a little Il Divo on youtube. Whoo. Too much. Back to I Puritani, quick!


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

guythegreg said:


> Back to I Puritani, quick!


you stopped I Puritani for Il Divo?! I don't know if I should laugh or cry, so I'll do both :lol: did you at least delete it from your views? my mum loves them and I've had to sit through their version of Amazing Grace on many occasions. Fauxpera boyband!


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## dionisio (Jul 30, 2012)

i think i've fallen in love with Rhoslyn Jones


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

deggial said:


> you stopped I Puritani for Il Divo?! I don't know if I should laugh or cry, so I'll do both :lol: did you at least delete it from your views? my mum loves them and I've had to sit through their version of Amazing Grace on many occasions. Fauxpera boyband!


Well, I've been listening to Puritani pretty much nonstop for the last week and a half, so it's not like I'm not going to hear it again soon. What really got ME about Il Divo was how seductively these young men all make love to the camera, like they're all flirting with forty-year-old Mexican matrons who love it. Suddenly the notion of not wanting to be MANIPULATED makes real sense to me! lol but it was really over the top. I feel like Mr. Bennett after first meeting Wickham. "He makes love to us all ..."


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

dionisio said:


> i think i've fallen in love with Rhoslyn Jones


What brown eyes she has, eh?


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Lord, I've somehow managed to live all this time and not hear Il Divo, felt compelled to test the water via YouTube. Just another pop group with a gimmick. At least not horrible.

Having sung opera I've often had the same questions, except the one about being fat, because I was pretty hefty for a long time so I suppose I fit the stereotype for that time frame.

If asked to sing, I rarely did so. I don't think most non-classical people have the slightest concept of how much volume a trained singer can project. Lots. Enough to part hair in the back row and scare everyone else. Not something you want to turn loose in the average pub on a Saturday afternoon (which is where you normally get asked those questions). So I'd just joke and tell them I would have to charge $100 per song or aria per my usual rate.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

guythegreg said:


> What brown eyes she has, eh?


very pretty! balcony seats when she's in town :tiphat:


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Well, do I look like an opera singer? Here's a shot during dress rehearsal of Manon, of me and a lovely redhead chorus friend.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

you look like Santa


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

deggial said:


> you look like Santa


A demonic Santa, to be accurate, and boy, did I have fun! Nowdays I'm about 80 pounds lighter.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

katdad said:


> Lord, I've somehow managed to live all this time and not hear Il Divo, felt compelled to test the water via YouTube. Just another pop group with a gimmick. At least not horrible.


OK, I gave in and listened to a song too. What really struck me was how odd the microphones looked. I guess I've forgotten that most non-opera singers use them.


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## dionisio (Jul 30, 2012)

mamascarlatti said:


> OK, I gave in and listened to a song too. What really struck me was how odd the microphones looked. I guess I've forgotten that most non-opera singers use them.


...and funny is to see that everything in Il Divo is in slow-motion. How funny is that?


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## MAuer (Feb 6, 2011)

Many years ago, when there were still bricks-and-mortar stores where one could purchase classical recordings, a salesperson told me that Siegfried Jerusalem didn't look like an opera singer (I was buying one of his solo albums). The implication was that he was too good-looking! I assured her that, if he wasn't an opera singer, he had the Met and quite a few other places fooled.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

MAuer said:


> Many years ago, when there were still bricks-and-mortar stores where one could purchase classical recordings, a salesperson told me that Siegfried Jerusalem didn't look like an opera singer (I was buying one of his solo albums). The implication was that he was too good-looking! I assured her that, if he wasn't an opera singer, he had the Met and quite a few other places fooled.


Well, she'd be in open-mouthed disbelief about Jonas Kaufmann then!


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

dionisio said:


> ...and funny is to see that everything in Il Divo is in slow-motion. How funny is that?


The other funny thing was the YT comments.... about how lovely their voices are. How would anyone even know? They didn't really hear them.


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Regarding "looking like" an opera singer, I wonder what people have in mind when they say that. Probably the hugely fat Wagnerian soprano with horned helmet from Bugs Bunny era cartoons.

In fact, singers look exactly like "regular people," like anybody else, some thin, some fat, most in between. My voice teacher was a baritone who was also a power lifter champ and looked like some menacing pro wrestler. His girlfriend, later wife, was a stunning brunette from Dallas who could Texas two-step like the best. My girlfriend at the time was a very pretty blonde soprano from Florida, and my opera colleagues were male, female, tall, short, young, older, some gay, any sort of cross section you could imagine.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

katdad said:


> Regarding "looking like" an opera singer, I wonder what people have in mind when they say that. Probably the hugely fat Wagnerian soprano with horned helmet from Bugs Bunny era cartoons.


In fact, the most famous of these cartoons had an extremely svelte Brünnhilde riding an extravagantly curvy horse.










Also note that, as per Wagner's direction, the helmet is winged rather than horned. The Tarnhelm is horned, though.


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Thanks so much for the wonderful panel from the cartoon! The "curvy horse" is wonderful. A delight!


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## dionisio (Jul 30, 2012)

If the great Bonisolli says that opera is fat, then opera is fat!


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## Dongiovanni (Jul 30, 2012)

Very nice reading. A quote from the article:

"Ever been to a production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle? It makes a Star Trek Convention look like cheerleading camp."

Hilarious !


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

ahammel said:


> In fact, the most famous of these cartoons had an extremely svelte Brünnhilde riding an extravagantly curvy horse.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I love that cartoon.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

ahammel said:


> In fact, the most famous of these cartoons had an extremely svelte Brünnhilde riding an extravagantly curvy horse.


Speaking of great librettos...:
http://web.mit.edu/minidev/lib/opera

E: Oh, Bwoonhilda, you're so wovely.

B: Yes, I know it, I can't help it.

A decade of trying to dissociate those words from the Pilgrim's Chorus down the drain....


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Your trying to expunge the comic lyrics from your brain reminds me of when I was a chorus singer, rehearsing the Toreador Song for the first time, and some of us quickly sang "Toreador-oh, Don't spit on the floor-oh".

And after laughing, our rehearsal conductor told us to never never sing that again, never to even think of it, because sure as winter is cold, first time we were on stage for real and singing, those lyrics would return to haunt us.


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## Geo Dude (May 22, 2013)

That was a great article. This one which I found under related articles is nice, too.


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