Smoke signals | 15 December 2007

The indulgences of Christmas in the forms of food and drink are fairly well represented in the operatic canon but less socially acceptable indulgences, such as smoking and even drug abuse, don’t feature quite so frequently. Hardly surprising, really, as singing doesn’t seem naturally to combine with snorting a line or the long, luxurious inhalation of nicotine-rich smoke deep into the lungs. Surprisingly, however, back in the days when smoking was considered to be positively beneficial — ‘Craven A: for your throat’s sake’ — a number of opera singers actually advertised for tobacco companies. The fabulously glamorous and velvet-voiced bass Ezio Pinza not only won a legion of adoring fans for his performances as Don Giovanni and for singing ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ in South Pacific, but was also rarely seen without a cigarette, in a holder of course, clamped between his teeth. And in 1950 he fronted an ad campaign for Camels — ‘How mild can a cigarette be?’

In 1912, and again in 1914, Wills produced a series of cards of musical personalities inside their packs of cigarettes. When the first world war broke out, eight cards in the second series were withdrawn because they featured German musicians, to be replaced by more patriotic figures. Casualties included Weber, Wagner and Mendelssohn (Edward German survived the cut).

There is one opera in which smoking features very prominently indeed — Carmen. The heroine of the title works in the Seville cigar factory (a building which exists to this day, currently housing the Law Department of the University) and is required in numerous productions to make her first entrance with a cigarette between her lips. Not many singers make a convincing job of this. There’s usually a great deal of gesturing, cigarette carefully/casually balanced between the first two fingers of the right hand, accompanied by rather too much spirited throwing back of the head and tossing of the gypsy locks.