Record company bosses and concert promoters may claim it sells, but Dame Kiri Te Kanawa deplores the sexualisation of female classical musicians.
In an interview with a UK magazine, she said female opera singers were under a ridiculous amount of pressure to stay as thin as Hollywood stars.
“Sometimes, the singer is more beautiful than their voice and that’s a bit of a sadness,” she told the Radio Times.
“When I was at the Met in New York, I would see these young girls, starving hungry but terrified to put on weight. They couldn’t even go down to the canteen and eat in front of anyone because they were being watched.
“You can’t do that. You’ve got to have beef on you if you’re going to sing.”
The Kiwi soprano said she ate to improve the quality of her voice. “If I started to get a bit lumpy round the middle, I would start thinking, ‘Well, I must get it off’, but I was also aware of how much I couldn’t or shouldn’t take off.”
Dame Kiri, 69, also took a swipe at talent contests. “There’s got to be a period of study, from age 16 to 22, and then it moves along. You can’t just think, ‘Oh, I can sing in the bathroom, I’ll be fine tonight on stage.’ Not at all.
“I’ve been criticised for even mentioning things like The X Factor. But I’m always wary of someone who is a bus driver and decides, aged 28, they want to be a singer.”
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