En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera / Edition 1

by Corrine Blackmer, Patricia Juliana Smith

Overview

— Michael and Linda Hutcheon, Cambridge Opera Journal

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231102698
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	11/23/1995
Series:	Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	381
Sales rank:	870,635
Product dimensions:	0.81(w) x 6.00(h) x 9.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Patricia Juliana Smith is the author of Lesbian Panic (Columbia). Corinne E. Blackmer teaches at Southern Connecticut State University.

What People are Saying About This

Susan McClary

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.

— Susan McClary, author of Feminine Endings

Editorial Reviews

In these 12 interdisciplinary, mostly accessible scholarly essays, opera-loving Engish professors and teachers of women's studies courses tell of their favorite trouser roles in opera, question received notions about historic divas, and more. Lesbian music scholar Judith Peraino identifies herself with Purcell's Dido and Aeneas because it is "Other"other than "real" opera, that is, because it bore no offspring in English operatic history and was written for girls to perform. "Queer" musicologist Mitchell Morris identifies himself with Countess Geschwitz in Berg's Lulu and speculates about the composer's sexual secrets in frankly gossipy style. A lesbian-oriented companion to Wayne Koestenbaum's The Queen's Throat (LJ 1/93), and the other side of the story told by Catherine Clement's Opera, or the Undoing of Women (Univ. of Minnessota Pr., 1988), this latest volume in Columbia's well-regarded series is recommended for academic collections as well as public libraries serving patrons who seriously love to argue over opera.Bonnie Jo Dopp, Montgomery Cty. P.L., Rockville, Md.

Library Journal

Thirteen essays on cross-dressing, sexuality, and female homoeroticism in opera. Essay titles include: what are these women doing in opera?; the lost voice of Rosine Stoltz; singing in Greek drag: Gluck, Berlioz, George Eliot; the lesbian in the opera: desire unmasked in Smyth's Fantasio and Fete Galante; and the ecstasies of Saint Teresa--the saint as queer diva. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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