engleski

Crossdressing Voices: Female and Male Vocal Interchangeability in 18th-Century Opera Seria

The cultural practice of crossdressing has so far been examined from a variety of historical and theoretical standpoints. In the realm of 17th and 18th-century Italian opera male crossdressing was temporally and geographically more specifically delineated (e. g. the vecchie of early Venetian opera and the performance of female roles by castrati in Rome) when compared to the more general female portrayal of male roles. The reasons for this are manifold, but apart from a predilection for higher voices, female crossdressing often relies on the logic of substitution (for a castrato or for a man in general). Making comparisons between tendencies of female and male crossdressing in both historical and contemporary practice could shed further light on this operatic phenomenon in which voice, gender, gesture and costume are constituent parts of equal importance. This study will examine practices of casting gender in the operas of G. F. Handel and his successors and attempt to confront it with modern theories of crossdressing, including the aesthetics of drag. Certain case studies will be chosen to highlight how this phenomenon changed over the course of the 18th century and how it influenced performance practice.

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