In this case the Fat Lady didn’t sing

That's appalling. If she can sing the part, on key, and have the endurance for the role, the rest of it shouldn't matter.

How are all those guys sleeping in their seats in evening dress going to know when it's over?

Arrrgghh...you beat me to it Acquiunk!

jespha, I agree. I always thought the point of opera was that you had to sing the part. If these guys had look and act the part most of them would be collecting unemployment.

Setanta, fire a cannon I guess.

Hobitbob, sorry.

At one point most opera singers were overweight--the bigger the body, the bigger the lungs and the greater The Voice. The Voice was All--acting was optional and the plot was a vehicle for The Voice.

I Googled and found:

The Prologue written for the second version of Ariadne auf Naxos is set in the house of a rich man, where preparations are being made for an evening entertainment. This is to allow the performance of a serious opera, a comic commedia dell'arte piece and fireworks. To save time, the patron has ordered the tragedy and comedy to be performed simultaneously. This distresses the composer, but his teacher, the music-master, advises compromise.

The opera starts, as it should, with Ariadne lamenting her fate, to the boredom of listening nymphs. The comedians, however, now intervene to console her, ignored by Ariadne, even when Zerbinetta interrupts. The comedians seek Zerbinetta's favour. The approach of the god Bacchus (Dionysus) arouses Ariadne and the two sing ecstatically, against a starry heaven. Zerbinetta has her own comment to make on all this in the first version, followed then by the bourgeois gentleman, Monsieur Jourdain himself. In the second version, now usually followed, Bacchus and Ariadne have the last word.

Molière's comedy concerns the gulling of the unfortunate Monsieur Jourdain, who has little idea how to employ his newly acquired wealth. Ariadne auf Naxos was originally intended to follow a performance of the German translation of the comedy, for which Lully had provided the original music in 1670. The work by Strauss and von Hofmannsthal provides a contrast between the comic and the tragic, the latter originally treated ironically, but more high- flown in the second version that now prevails, lacking, as it does, the deflation of Zerbinetta's final comments and the re-appearance of a bewildered Monsieur Jourdain.


http://www.naxos.com/NewDesign/fintro.files/bintro.files/operas/Ariadne_auf_Naxos(Ariadne_on_Naxos)(Richard_Strauss).htm


Since comedy and tragedy are being mixed (in modern dress according to the AP story) a 200 pound Adriadne might strain credulity.