A pregnant pause?

This article was originally published in our Autumn 2024 issue. Click here to subscribe to our quarterly print magazine and be the first to read our January 2025 issue features.

When I was studying, I was strongly advised by multiple people against having children,’ Madeleine Pierard tells me. ‘The biggest reason for that, sadly, is that you’re then perceived as not serious about the job. It’s ridiculous.’ The London-based soprano ignored that advice and now has three children and an international singing career, as well as being director of Te Pae Kōkako, The Aotearoa New Zealand Opera Studio in her home country. Safe to say, it’s worked out well. Pierard is part of a generation of women who are talking not just about how the opera industry needs to adapt its practices and attitudes to working mothers and parents, but are also being refreshingly open about a formerly taboo subject: how pregnancy affects singers.

It’s a big topic, with as many experiences as there are women. Every pregnancy, every singer is different. Pregnancy is, after all, a melting pot of physical, emotional and psychological changes. All of which have the potential to impact the voice, which for an opera professional is as sensitive as it is strong. There are horror stories. In 2023, the mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili told the New York Times she’d had ‘a nightmare, a total nightmare’ since being pregnant, essentially losing her voice as a result. She’s yet to make a full return to her high-flying career. ‘Some people really struggle,’ says Hannah Sandison, mezzo-soprano and part of the management team at SWAP’ra, an artist-led group that supports women and parents in opera. ‘Like with periods, pregnancy can really affect one woman, and another doesn’t feel any different.’

 Even within one nine-month pregnancy, each trimester can pose different challenges. ‘Personally, for me, in the first trimester I was dealing with nausea. I did not have the most comfortable time singing,’ says Sandison. ‘I remember I did an audition during the early stages of pregnancy that didn’t go very well because I was simply trying not to be sick in the hours leading up to it.’ She also had fatigue and brain fog. ‘Everything is focused on growing the baby,’ she reflects, ‘so it can be hard to summon the energy for singing.’

Yet after those three months, the story might completely change, as it did for Sandison. ‘It was the best singing experience of my life,’ she says. ‘I felt strong. My voice was blooming. The hormones were doing something for me. What I also believe to be the case is that because of the extra weight on my body, my voice was supported in a way that made the singing feel easier for me. You get stronger in certain areas; are forced to stand up straight and to breathe in a certain way.’

The best singing experience of my life’: Sandison’s voice was at its strongest after the first trimester © Pablo Strong

Breathing well is one of the common themes that all pregnant singers have to navigate, although how the breath is affected depends on where the baby is lying. If the bump is higher up, it can make it harder to expand the rib cage and draw a good, deep breath, advises Sandison. Hormones also play a key role, with fluctuating levels having the potential to cause vocal cords to thicken, and to cause the loss of top notes in a register. Acid reflux is another challenge. ‘I immediately got acid reflux from day one until I gave birth, when it disappeared, and that can cause vocal cords to be inflamed,’ says Sandison.

A seemingly straightforward pregnancy may still be filled with unexpected twists and turns. ‘One physical thing that, even though it was a negative, affected my singing in a positive way, was that in my second and third pregnancies, I suffered from symphysis pubis dysfunction,’ says Pierard. ‘The relaxin hormone, which comes in during the second trimester to soften the joints for ease of expansion, was overactive and the front of the pelvic girdle literally comes apart. It’s extremely painful.’ Pierard tackled the issue with physiotherapy exercises, and along the way turned a negative into a positive. She credits those exercises with allowing her to sing five days after giving birth – not something she would recommend but, in that instance, born of necessity as a freelance singer. ‘I wouldn’t want to set any kind of dangerous expectation for people who might feel pressure to get back too soon,’ she notes.

There’s something in the world that is simply more important than your singing career, that makes you, the voice, your performance freer.' Sandison finds performing as a parent 'liberating’ © Pablo Strong

When to return to work after pregnancy looms large for opera singers, a question affected by whether they’ve had a vaginal birth or a caesarean section. Sandison has had both, and in both cases had to perform after nine weeks. ‘After my first birth, which was vaginal, the mechanism of support around the pelvic floor is simply not as strong because you’ve just had a baby travel through that area,’ she says, adding that although she didn’t experience it, prolapse is incredibly common. Her second birth was a caesarean. ‘My agent had booked me in for a concert abroad eight weeks after, and I didn’t know if I was going to be internally healed enough to do it. I worked with a fantastic teacher who gave me really gentle exercises to help slowly build that area up beforehand. I did the concert, and it was one of the best feelings vocally I’d ever had, because I’d been working so hard on my body and the awareness of those muscles.’

What’s striking about both Sandison and Pierard’s stories is that while pregnancy brought with it changes and challenges, it was also a time of artistic growth and development. Sandison, who also works as a performance psychologist, sees the huge emotional benefits becoming a parent can have. ‘I think it’s really important to talk about, because suddenly [when you become a parent], there’s something in the world that is simply more important than your singing career,’ she says. ‘That makes you, the voice, your performance freer. It’s liberating.’

‘In our first year with SWAP’ra, we did a lot of interviews with singers who had been through parenthood in the seventies, eighties and nineties, and it was absolutely never mentioned to anyone that they were parents,’ says Pierard, who is also on the senior management team of SWAP’ra. ‘Now we have plenty of examples of people in extremely high-calibre roles like Renée Fleming, Diana Damrau and Christine Goerke, who are very open about their family life and about the fact that the profession needs to be more oriented towards human and family needs.’ That’s something SWAP’ra has worked to improve, meeting with major opera companies to talk about ways in which they can support parents.

The organisation finds that one of the main concerns people get in touch about is when to tell an employer about a pregnancy. Partly because stories and rumours still circulate of singers who suspect – or even know for sure – that they lost work due to being pregnant, even though the law protects against unfair treatment and dismissal in those circumstances. ‘We’re not in a perfect world,’ says Sandison. ‘There are situations where it does not go well.’ One such case was in 2018, when Julie Fuchs was fired from singing the role of Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute at Hamburg State Opera, because the theatre believed her pregnancy would ‘compromise the production’s artistic integrity’. When the story went public, it sparked outrage. But Sandison does believe practices are slowly changing: ‘The companies are now saying, the earlier you tell us, the better, as they are absolutely willing to re-costume or re-design certain things.’

And perhaps part of that shift is understanding that pregnancy is simply one experience that might impact a singer’s voice. Pierard sums it up well: ‘Changes happen throughout our lives. I now have a completely different voice in colour than I had ten years ago, maybe even five or three years ago. I’ve gone from mezzo-soprano to coloratura soprano to dramatic soprano. So those are pretty far-away voice types. People go through these changes throughout their lives as singers, whether they have children or not.’