“It’s adjustable, yes?” Standing in a dressing room at the opera house in Montpellier, France, in May, soprano Maya Kherani tugged at the waist of her tiered skirt.
“We’re lucky,” he said, wrapping his hands around the soft sphere of her belly. “It works for the character.”
Kherani considered herself lucky not because she landed the role of Autonoe, a main character in “Orfeo” by the baroque composer Antonio Sartorio. Rather, Kherani, who gave birth in late June, was relieved that her wardrobe in this modern-dress production featured elastic waistbands and flat shoes that would make singing and acting bearable at 32 weeks pregnant. Stage manager Benjamin Lazar incorporated her pregnancy, making him the driving force behind her character’s attempt to win back her wandering lover.
“In my gestures and staging, I refer to pregnancy,” Kherani said. “Everyone really is supportive, which is not always the case.”
In most musical professions, pregnant women determine how long they work. However, opera singers rely on the goodwill and skill of a creative team: costume managers who add ruching to the outfit, and stage managers who might change a risky part of the stage look. Yet all too often they lose their job.
And yet, opera is a rare business in which pregnancy and childbirth can positively affect the main product—the voice. The science behind this phenomenon isn’t yet well understood, but it’s such a common occurrence that it’s become a no-brainer in opera: Postpartum, the voice seems enriched with warmth, creaminess, and depth of color.
A growing number of women in the industry are reporting what they feel are cancellations motivated by appearance rather than sound. Officially, opera houses say they are concerned about security. But not all cancellations reflect the singer’s wishes.
Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke said she was cut from a production weeks before the premiere when the company learned she was pregnant and that she lost a role at another opera house after her manager told the company she would be in her second trimester. “The industry still sees you as its property,” she said.
Like other singers, Cooke did not want to identify the companies that canceled her contracts.
Many female singers report doing their best work in the second and sometimes the third trimester, when physiological changes improve your vocal power. Much of that power comes from the muscles and tissues that singers learn to activate for what is known as appoggio.the internal support on which they lean to control the flow of breath.
Paul Kwak, an otolaryngologist who works with opera singers, said voices are affected by the hypervascular state the body is in during pregnancy by creating more blood vessels and increasing blood flow through tissues. Because the tissue and muscle in the vocal cords can swell with that extra blood, he said, “it can change the way the vocal cords oscillate.” At the same time, changes in the abdominal cavity create pressure in the lower part of the diaphragm.
Soprano Kathryn Lewek, who sang the role of Queen of the Night in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” during two pregnancies, said by the second trimester she felt like she was acting “on steroids.” “The high notes would just shoot out of me.”
Many singers said that voice improvement after childbirth may be due to integrating tools used during pregnancy into their technique.
“You learn to use a broader base of breath support, including your back muscles, which I think every singer tries to tap into, but I’ve been forced to,” Kherani said.
Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
The New York Times
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6809246, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-07-18 20:30:08
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