Readings, Listenings, Viewings
Mozart, Marriage of Figaro (Salzburger Festspiele, dir. Guth, cond. Harnoncourt, 2006 Unitel). Available for streaming on our Blackboard site under “Reserves”; and here is a link to a translation of the libretto, useful for the exercise below.
Sarah Hennies, Contralto.
Reflections
Heather Hadlock, “Peering into The Queen’s Throat,” Cambridge Opera Journal 5.3 (1993): 265-75.
Heather Hadlock, “The Career of Cherubino, or the Trouser Role Grows Up,” in Siren Songs (67-92).
Wayne Koestenbaum, “The Queen’s Throat, Or How to Sing,” from The Queen’s Throat (pp. 154-75).
OPTIONAL: Elizabeth Wood, “Sapphonics,” in Queering the Pitch (pp. 27-66).
Questions
Welcome, friends, to opera week, which might also be known as “voice and sex” week, since, in opera, battles are waged over the connections between voice, gender and desire, both onstage and off. For Wayne Koestenbaum, the operatic voice is a fantasy surrogate that aligns him, the adoring gay fan, with his chosen diva. How does he perform this neat trick, and what, for Koestenbaum, is the connection between writing, singing and being gay? Koestenbaum’s queering of opera is challenged by Heather Hadlock, both for a lazy equation of “gay” and “queer,” and for his paradoxical “exclusion of women” from his brand of queerness. Does Hadlock’s critique seem fair?
As you watch the Salzburg Festival production of Marriage of Figaro this week, pay attention to how opera on film is different from other kinds of film. Generally speaking, in cinema, verisimilitude counts — to play the part, you have to look it. But in opera, as Hadlock writes, we “look through or disregard a singer’s body and instead ‘see’ the voice.” What does this mean, and, if Hadlock is right that we visually discard operatic bodies, then why all the emphasis on sex? What exactly is this strange brand of sex we encounter in opera? A “third sex,” as Hadlock suggests? What does it mean that, for Koestenbaum, “Homosexuality is a way of singing”?
Exercise
For this exercise, we ask you to change the gender of a scene in Le Nozze di Figaro. What does that mean, “change the gender”? It could mean changing the gender of one or more characters—not necessarily (though possibly) their biological sex, certainly their orientation and expression. It could mean changing, or complicating, the gender of the scene itself, of the music or the scenography or the plot. The general idea is to take advantage of the gender mobility of opera to experiment with its vocal materials. You might rewrite a portion of the libretto, or provide new scenography or stage directions in prose; you might also record or film an illustrative sample. Our readings for the week provide resources for thinking about what it means for opera to be queer, or to queer an opera, though other gender possibilities are on the table, too. Whatever you do, let voice be the center of your concerns; be thoughtful, respectful, generous, curious; and provide the usual 300 words of comment explaining what you are up to.