Italy’s Fertility Day posters aren’t just sexist – they’re echoes of a fascist past | Annalisa Coppolaro-Nowell

Italy woke up last week to a series of offensive images that could have been published in the 1930s, including the slogan “Beauty knows no age. Fertility does.” They were sexist, ageist – and promoted by the government and health minister Beatrice Lorenzin to publicise 22 September, which it has designated Fertility Day. On this day, people will be able to “get more information” on how to procreate and be happier, which, as the bestselling author Roberto Saviano puts it, offends “all the people who don’t have children and those who would like to have some but can’t because there is no work in Italy”.

According to the official website: “The first Fertility Day will be celebrated to attract attention to the topic of fertility and its protection,” and “to underline the danger of falling birth rates in our country”. It also says it wants to focus on “the beauty of maternity and paternity” and “medical help for those people who are having problems conceiving”. The site offers information about how Italian regions will be involved, with doctors, pharmacists and clinics available to give advice to those interested in the subject of procreation. And in four major Italian towns – Rome, Bologna, Padova and Catania – there will be events to promote fertility and discussions on the subject.

In the 1930s posters on the walls incited women to give more children to the fatherland

In and of itself that might not have been cause for such a furore – but what has ignited anger is not just the idea of procreation as a matter for the state to intervene in, but the images associated with it: a series of photos of pregnancy, and some troubling adverts, such as one where a woman holds an hourglass to show that her biological clock ticking away.

The reaction has been fierce, with many questioning if there is not a better way to encourage people to have children – by promoting employment policy, for example, and by helping the economy to grow more after many years of recession. Only in the last six months has Italy started to recover from a long period of economic trouble. But growth is slow and unemployment is still very high – over 40% – among the under-25s.

It’s that age group that also feels put out . One of the slogans, “reproducing is the best way for young couples to be creative”, has been roundly condemned by many newspapers including La Repubblica, La Stampa and even Il Giornale – with headlines such as “The web attacks the health minister for her slogan: We need to make more children.”

But it is the use of the images and what they say about the place of women in Italy that has offended so many people, including those who choose not to have children for their own reasons. Why should they be discriminated against? The recent law on civil unions approved by the Italian parliament a few weeks ago gave many the impression that the state had finally accepted a broader idea of the family, but now this campaign puts the emphasis back on discrimination. Women are targeted by this fertility campaign, as if they were the only people responsible for the declining birthrate that has been affecting Italy for many years.

It all sounds so similar to the fascist slogans of the 1930s, when posters on the walls incited women to give more children to the fatherland. Many cannot believe that a female minister has launched such a sexist, ageist, anachronistic campaign in a country where many other urgent problems remain to be addressed.

Italy’s Fertility Day posters aren’t just sexist – they’re echoes of a fascist past | Annalisa Coppolaro-Nowell

It"s not sexist when opera critics find fault with Glyndebourne"s body fat girls | Man Dammann

Tara Erraught as Octavian and Teodora Gheorghiu as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. ‘I’m not right here to defend the option of words some colleagues employed, but no one seeing the performance could fairly fail to comment on Octavian’s look.’ Photograph: Tristram Kenton/Tristram Kenton

‘Break a leg” is a phrase one often hears outdoors theatres and opera houses. Normally, of program, it indicates “very good luck”. At the moment although, it is just as very likely to be meant actually, as a piece of advice for singers on how to deal with opera critics.

At the heart of the storm enveloping my occupation are the remarks manufactured in 5 broadsheet reviews of Glyndebourne’s new manufacturing of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. In a unusual example of unanimity every review, including this newspaper’s, pointed to a problem with the portrayal of the work’s hero, Octavian, who was described variously as “stocky”, “dumpy” – and in the situation of the Fiscal Times, “a chubby bundle of puppy excess fat”. Octavian, a male character but written for a female voice and hence often played on stage by a lady, is a tricky part for a amount of causes, not least of which is that a married princess, a younger bride-to-be and her country squire fiance are all supposed to discover him devilishly appealing, either when he is dressed as himself – a 17-12 months-old playboy aristocrat – or as a chamber maid known as Mariandel. Oh yes, and the actor taking part in this improbable Adonis has to be in a position to sing like a goddess.

In the case of Glyndebourne’s new staging, the director Richard Jones sought to make Octavian seem more a gauche teenager than a self-assured aristocrat. Tara Erraught, the mezzo-soprano cast in the position, was provided a Little Lord Fauntleroy-style, curly wig, a suit also tight in many areas, and “bum-fluff” stubble on her chin. Her Octavian runs against what we assume to be correct about the character, and in so carrying out disrupts our comprehending of why, in every situation, the 3 other characters want so desperately to get into her, sorry I imply his, trousers.

I am not right here to defend the decision of words some of my colleagues used, but no one particular seeing the functionality could fairly fail to comment on Octavian’s physical appearance. Certainly, any reviewer not asking concerns about this exact level would be failing in their duty to hold the manufacturing and its efficiency to account. None of the reviewers involved dispensed gratuitous misogyny. But this is what, in quite a few newspaper articles or blog posts and columns, radio programmes, and in thousands of tweets and Facebook posts, they stand accused of. Which is ridiculous.

Opera critics, writing in the daily press, normally have amongst 300 and 500 words to assessment a manufacturing, so there is fairly a bit of shorthand concerned. And part of that shorthand is a conflated way of talking about stage characters and singers in a single breath.

But even offered far more room, the dilemma would stay. In opera, characters and singers are more difficult to keep apart than in classical theatre. That is simply because opera is also, or even mostly, about singing. And while when seeking at opera we may possibly be furnished with an illusion of stage characters inhabiting dramatic roles, we also encounter in a much more direct way the specific voices of singers who, while acting with their bodies, are singing in their very own voices.

This bleeding of the private into the abstract, and the blurred lines in between theatrical illusion and enhanced bodily presence by way of unamplified voices, may effectively constitute an argument about why opera critics should be much more circumspect than other individuals in their remarks about singer’s physical appearance.

But it is also one of the causes why opera is an art form capable of making amounts of passion, and attractiveness, which are unique between the arts. Certainly, given the form’s uniquely higher manufacturing values, and the possibility for obtaining existence-improving beauty in each and every tiny bodily and conceptual detail arrayed both on the stage and beneath it in the orchestra pit, we need to be straining each sinew in making an attempt to defend it, and its suitable criticism.

It"s not sexist when opera critics find fault with Glyndebourne"s body fat girls | Man Dammann