Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman in Early-Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera

by Naomi André

The early 19th century was a period of acute transition in operatic tradition and style, when time-honored practices gave way to the developing aesthetics of Romanticism, the rise of the tenor overtook the falling stars of the castrati, and the heroic, the masculine, and the feminine were profoundly reconfigured. These transformations resounded in operatic plot structures as well; the happy resolution of the 18th century twisted into a tragic 19th-century finale with the death of the helpless and innocent heroine―and frequently her tenor hero along with her. Female voices which formerly had sung en travesti, or basically in male drag, opposite their female character counterparts then took on roles of the second woman, a companion and foil to the death-bound heroine rather than her romantic partner. In Voicing Gender, Naomi André skillfully traces the development of female characters in these first decades of the century, weaving in and around these changes in voicings and plot lines, to define an emergent legacy in operatic roles.

Genres: Music, Feminism, History, Nonfiction

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Max]

Ok so this isn’t really about castrati at all (except as they relate to women), it’s about women in opera in a specific period. Did you know travesti means crossdressed opera roles played by women? I didn’t! Neat research!! I like reading specialized stuff from fields I know nothing about and just want to say I have NEVER been as completely lost as I was reading the technical singing parts. I guess I had no idea what music scholarship is and how utterly beyond me it was but I know now. Kinda fun. Don’t know what she was talking about and don’t really care but it seemed like it would be really compelling to someone who did know and did care. It was kinda weird to me how she sorta avoided really making sense of any of it, i was really surprised when I got to the end and there wasn’t another entire chapter where she draws firmer, more specific conclusions about how women were seen/imagined then based on her observations. I will be avoiding this “musicology” in the future but wish its practitioners well