Trans creativity, March: from punk to opera

 Although transphobia is pretty rampant right now, I don't despair as I see a lot of transpositive things around, especially in the world of the performing arts. Indeed, as transphobia becomes increasingly associated with inhumane, crazy leaders such as Putin and Trump, I expect other better regulated nations to oppose transphobia. I'm coining the term "Posiblogger" for those of us who write positively about trans achievements and progress, which continue apace despite the hate in some corners.

Last month I focused inevitably on pop music because of the massive influence of the Sanremo Music Festival, always an LGBT-positive event. This month I'll focus on alternative types of music, starting with words from a rather different musician, John Lydon, otherwise known as Johnny Rotten, who will be performing in Genoa, Italy, this week. In a long interview in my daily paper he is asked "what is punk according to Johnny Rotten?" His reply: "Punk is fleeing from all those horrible traditions, from uniformity and restrictions, and instead being what you want. ... Punk is being true to yourself and not to a system. That's Johnny Rotten's answer." That did resonate with me as being trans also involves being true to yourself, being what you want and not conforming with the system. 

So as I sit here in my torn fishnets sticking another safety pin in my ear, let me tell you about what gender non-conforming things I've found in the world of the arts this month. Sorry, Johnny, but actually it's mainly about opera this month, which - a bit like British pantomime - has always had a defining tradition of crossdressing roles from its inception. Here are some items I've spotted elsewhere in the music press.

 

Castrato roles

Thankfully, we have banned the unjust and cruel practice of creating castratos but there is a huge revival of interest these days in music from the era when they dominated the musical stage. Such roles are now usually (though not always) taken by women, such as Cecilia Molinari, a leading mezzo-soprano who has shown great interest in working en travesti in male roles as, for instance, Orpheus in Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice, as Ariodante in Handel's opera of that name, and, of course, Cherubino in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, traditionally a 'trouser role' for female singers. A female voice and a male voice are never the same even in the same registers so these days there are compromises to be made. There are, of course, high male countertenors who sometimes take female roles. (Whole books are written on this so we'll keep the topic short this brief here.)

 

Islam and the West

Interestingly and encouragingly, a traditional female role, the Duchess of Crakentorp in Donizetti's La fille du régiment was taken by a man in the latest production at the Muscat opera house in the Sultanate of Oman, an islamic state. Islam is uneasy with things that in the West attract little notice, such as open signs of affection or consumption of alcohol, so producers of Western opera have to tread carefully with certain scenes with kissing and booze to avoid local censorship. Nominally at least, modern Islam also disapproves of heterodox sexuality and gender expression (the Koran itself seems to me to be somewhat less squeamish) so given the gender bending that's always been inherent in opera, this recent acceptance seems a positive sign that the less fundamentalist corners of Islam might be mellowing further as regards gendered roles. 

 

Contemporary opera and productions with gender nonconformity

Here's a brief run through other opera productions this season that involve crossdressing/trans/gender-nonconforming roles:

- Olga Neuwirth, a contemporary Austrian composer, whose 2019 opera Orlando, based on the ultimate gender switching novel by Virginia Wolfe, continues to see this acclaimed work of hers performed.

- Romain Dumas, another contemporary composer and conductor, is still awaiting the opportunity to have his opera Les mirifiques aventures du Chevalier d’Eon (The Amazing Adventures of the Chevalier d'Eon) performed. The Chavelier d'Eon is, of course, Charles or Charlotte de Beaumont, Louis XV's diplomat and spy and something of a patron saint of the trans community. 

- Another contemporary composer, Mikael Karlsson, has written the opera Fanny and Alexander, based on the Ingmar Bergman film. Its recent, sold-out world première saw countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as genderless character Ismael. The opera is in English and here is Ismael's scene (15 minutes):

 

(I'm pleased that modern "classical" music is moving away from the dissonance that was so prevalent when I was younger! I like the background graphics here, too.)

- a new production of Les Brigands by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) - best known for composing the can-can! - is in decidedly queer mode in Barry Kosky's "divine" production playing in Paris this summer. Here's the trailer:

 - Just as an illustration of the typical crossdressing fun of opera, Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) wrote a short one-act comic opera Mavra in 1921-22, which a recent production has twinned with the better known one-act comic opera Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) - the one with the famous aria O mio babbino caro - as part of last year's centenary commemorations of Puccini's death. In Mavra, a girl smuggles her lover into her home disguised as a female cook. 

So if you're trans and can sing, you might want to consider a career in opera! There's plenty of scope for alternative gender expression just in this season's offerings, as you can see. For more on this theme, I also wrote about opera and musical theatre six months ago here: Trans Creatives, October '24.

 

Nest month there'll be more on the visual arts. If opera isn't your thing and you've been missing painting and sculpture, I can recommend beautiful Franziska from Frankfurt's recent post about her visit to an art student exhibition in Düsseldorf, Germany, here: Weekend trip crossdressed: the class of 2024. 

Sue x