The paradox of a talented operatic voice with a reality television presence is tough for certain purists to swallow. She’s blazing her own path.
It’s been over seven years since Joynt was on season 18 of The Bachelor (a popular American dating and relationship reality television series) where her presence caused two sets of stereotypes to collide. Bachelor viewers and media praised her for bringing “sophistication” to the show—that’s opera reduced to its affiliation with wealth, like the way movie villains are always interrupted while listening to an aria—while the opera world didn’t know what to do with her. She was getting famous for the wrong thing, dabbling in the low arts, and demonstrating that musical artists could have other lives by choice. And that’s opera, and the performing arts in general, perpetuating the exclusionary myth that great artists are fundamentally all the same.
Lev Bratishenko’s writing on music has appeared in Classical Voice North America, Musical Toronto/Ludwig Van, The Montreal Gazette, Maclean’s, Opera Canada, and Opera News.
