Writing in The New Yorker on Hillary Rodham Clinton's relations with news media, Ken Auletta references Gloria Steinem, who says, "journalists affix adjectives to female candidates--shrill, pushy, aggressive, ambitious, divisive, bossy--that they don't apply to males."
The same complaint could be aimed at critics and some others in the operatic world. We thought criticism of a female singer's shape and size had ended with the Jane Eaglen incident (Eaglen has gone on to continued triumphs, while the person who thought her too large for a role--how can anyone be too large for Wagner?--has vanished from sight); but no, this season five critics took aim, in a manner reminiscent of early teenage bullying, at the Irish mezzo Tara Erraught, in her UK debut at Glyndebourne.
Male singers seldom if ever are criticized for their appearance (although Pauline Kael, reviewing a filmed version of "Carmen," with Placido Domingo as Don Jose, called him "the world's oldest corporal").
The singer playing the seductively dangerous lead in "Carmen" doesn't have to be beautiful, she may even be what the French would call "jolie laide." She has only to be (at least for Don Jose) irresistibly attractive. Don Jose, however, should appear to be young, naive, handsome and slim. We remember a production of the Bizet opera in which the singer playing Carmen met all the criteria, but the Humpty-Dumpty tenor playing Don Jose was perhaps four inches shorter and twenty years older than she. No wonder the Gypsy jumped to Escamillo.
No critic, however, mentioned this. Until now.
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