En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera (Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies) - Softcover

Blackmer, Corrine E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231102690 ISBN 13: 9780231102698

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1995

Synopsis

En Travesti addresses the ways in which opera empowers women by challenging conventional gender hierarchies. Terry Castle, Hélène Cixous, Lowell Gallagher and Elizabeth Wood are among the contributors. Includes 20 musical examples.

About this title

Review

Celebrates opera as a medium that empowers female desire and undermines the heterosexist hierarchies its plots would seem to perpetuate. The impressive group of authors in this collection-literary critics, musicologists, philosophers, reexamine not only operas ranging from Monteverdi to Gertrude Stein but also the complex relationships between divas and their female fans. A stunning contribution to cultural studies, feminism, and music criticism.

Synopsis

Since the release of Wayne Koestenbaum's book, "The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire", gender studies has begun to take an active interest in music. Opera, long viewed as strictly an establishment tradition, has in particular been given a second look by gender theorists. Can opera - an antiquated, Eurocentric bastion of "high" culture - in fact be subverting patriarchal authority in some fundamental way? Taking a primarily lesbian point of view on the subject, this work addresses the ways in which opera empowers women by challenging conventional gender hierarchies. Critics explore the rich tradition of cross-dressing in opera, and show that there's much more to opera than meets the eye. The travesti, or "trouser" role is shown to be only one of a wide field of representations of operatic women characters who fall outside of the stereotype of the tragic heroine. Women characters in opera have often broken free of traditional roles, performing heroic deeds such as freeing cities from invaders or romancing the soprano heroine.

Indeed, these essays suggest that opera may actually be the site of the most extensive representation of female homoerotic modes to be found in any pre-20th century art form. Contributors to this collection cover a broad spectrum of topics on women in opera: some focus on roles that have captured the attention of women listeners - Purcell's "Dido", Gluck's "Orpheus", Rossini's "Tancredi" - while others explore the impact of noted performers, such as Brigitte Fassbaender and Jenny Lind.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0231102690
• ISBN 13: 9780231102698
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 392