Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

The Siege of Corinth

Trouser Roles in Opera

You've read the plot summary and you think you're ready for the sumptuous sensory experience that is opera. Yet when the young male lover strides onto the stage, the singer is a woman! What is the twenty-first century opera neophyte to make of that?

Seasoned subscribers might be mentally prepared for seeing works with so-called “breeches” or “trousers” roles in them. Indeed, classic characters such as Cherubino in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro , Arsace in Rossini's Semiramide , and Octavian in Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier are familiar relics of this once-common casting tradition. Yet there is always that moment of disorientation until the singer's voice makes one forget the gender issue. These women simply merge seamlessly with the male characters they portray, and the voice—that all-important element of opera—distracts from any lingering disbelief.

Opera history tells us that performing en travesti (literally, “in disguise”) goes back to the very earliest works. Just as Shakespeare and his contemporaries employed young boys to play women, males appeared on the operatic stage, quite often in comic roles. Necessity required certain male singers, namely castrati , to sing female roles in Rome when, at papal whim, women were periodically banned from the public stage there. Generally, though, castrati played the heroes and lovers, perhaps an irony, but clearly demonstrating an aesthetic that favored the high voice for such characters. What, then, did opera troupes do if there were no castrati available? The gender tables were turned, and, because their vocal ranges were similar, mezzos and contraltos donned their male colleagues' costumes. Certain roles were performed by both males and females; Handel, for example, was quite content to use Margherita Durastanti until the castrato Senesino could be brought to London . Once he was under contract, Handel went back to writing female roles for Durastanti. Other male parts, including the above-mentioned roles, were composed specifically for women. Even Wagner composed a “breeches” role: Adriano in Rienzi .

“Trousers” roles became more prevalent in the early nineteenth century when the use of castrati fell out of fashion. Until the tenor voice came into its own, women took over the tasks of the castrati , even temporarily inheriting the term often used for that voice type: musico . Certain singers were adept at facilely moving from one gender role to another: some women were able to convincingly sing the role of Romeo one night and Giulietta the next in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi . Certainly the career of Marilyn Horne has mirrored those of these nineteenth-century divas, for she has been equally at home in the roles of Arsace and Carmen. Another famous Carmen, Denyce Graves, has “trousers” roles to her credit, among them Nicklausse in Les Contes d'Hoffmann .

Among Rossini's “trousers” roles is that of Néocle in L'assedio di Corinto , a part that in itself has an intriguing history. In its first incarnation, this work was Maometto II , premiered in Naples in 1820. In the original version, the character of Néocle was called Calbo, sung by a contralto en travesti . When Rossini revised the opera into Le siège de Corinthe , a three-act tragédie lyrique for the Parisian stage in 1826, Calbo was renamed Néocle and the role was assigned to a tenor. As often happened, though, revisions were translated, thereby making their way back to the country of their origin; thus was born L'assedio di Corinto . The character remained Néocle (without the final French “s”) but the role was once again performed en travesti , as it is in this production for Baltimore Opera.

This production of L'assedio di Corinto offers the unique opportunity to experience early nineteenth-century opera as it was in a time when gender was never the issue because the voice reigned supreme.

-Denise Gallo

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