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Opera open thread: Men in women's rôles [1]
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Date: 2025-09-13
Given their concern about keeping men out of girls’ sports, Republicans seem oddly unconcerned about a similar problem in opera: men singing women’s rôles. Please, hear me out. It is something that happens. Not very frequently, but it does happen.
It used to happen more frequently four centuries ago, when women were not allowed to participate in theatrical productions, even though almost every script being produced back then had women characters. Such as, for example, any play by Shakespeare.
Boys have high-pitched voices, and a few of them even have beautiful singing voices. But with puberty, the voice drops in pitch, to the tenor or even bass register. Someone had the bright idea of castrating the boys with the better voices, so that their voices would not change. Those boys still grew up as men, but they were unable to have children of their own.
Apparently, the Catholic Church was fine with mutilating those boys so they could sing, but has always been thoroughly opposed to any kind of gender-affirming care even if the parents approve. The church did begin to phase out castrati in the 19th Century, though there was a weak attempt to ban them in the 18th Century.
Back then, castrati were very popular. Although tastes changed, phasing castrati out took decades. Their employment at the Vatican might have continued to as late as 1959. Opera more or less followed the church on this one.
Castrati were so popular that some opera composers sometimes wrote both male and female rôles for them, such as Handel writing both Agrippina and her son Nerone to be sung by castrati in Agrippina, which was recently put on at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
What to do with all that repertoire? The Met has solutions for that.
Fortunately, singers and directors have come up with two solutions for casting castrato roles today. One solution involves having a woman sing the role formerly played by a male castrato. Another solution is the “countertenor,” a male singer who has carefully trained his falsetto range so he can sing the high notes required by castrato roles. Both of these solutions are on display in the Met’s production of Agrippina: Nerone will be played by the (female) mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey, while Ottone will be played by (male) countertenor Iestyn Davies.
There’s a third solution, though rare, such as with Samuel Mariño who can sing either Orfeo or Euridice in Monteverdi’s Orfeo ed Euridice.
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Kelly Burke explains for the Guardian:
As a male soprano, ... Mariño does not sing falsetto, a technique employed by countertenors to sing the roles originally written for castrati in the baroque and classical repertoire.
Mariño had a high-pitched voice as a boy, but as the voices of other boys his age changed, his did not. Predictably, he was bullied, and he was so unhappy with the situation that he considered medical intervention to lose a kind of voice that boys in the past had been castrated to preserve.
Eventually, Mariño decided to abandon his balletic ambitions after a doctor persuaded him to focus on his singing talent instead.
“I like to describe my voice as a light lyric soprano, with a bit of coloratura,” he says, speaking to the Guardian after a day’s rehearsal with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra in Sydney earlier this week. “If I sing falsetto, I sound like Mariah Carey. Or Prince.” Mariño’s speaking voice has a pleasing soft tinkle to it. A boyish smile never leaves his face. His buoyant, joyous personality, says Brandenburg’s co-founder and artistic director Paul Dyer, radiates from the stage. “And it’s exquisite to hear a male singing that high. And it’s even more breathtaking to watch other males in the audience see this handsome young man walking out on stage – they don’t know what’s going to come out – and then suddenly this rare jewel of a voice. Since Covid forced performing artists into live streaming and performing in empty concert halls, the petite framed Marino has augmented his stage presence with a stunning wardrobe of gender-defying costumes. Before Covid, it was all so strict, all boring black tuxedoes, he says. “But no audience? I say, you know what, I will dress for fun. I will use sequins. I will use high heels, why can I not use fashion like a pop artist? When Covid came, it was the first time I wore a skirt.”
Mariño might become as popular as the castrati of old. His recent album on Decca is currently one of the most popular on the Naxos Music Library, which includes albums from several labels besides Naxos.
The open thread question: What would you suggest Republicans do about the “problem” of men singing women’s rôles?
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