The modern pants, or travesty, role has evolved from a mixed history of practices in church music and opera from the middle of the 1500s. In both church and on stage, the use of male voices in soprano, mezzo soprano and alto parts was due to a ban on women performing in public. Some of the roles women took over were those that had originally been played by male singers – either young boys, falsetti singers, or castrati.
Castrati Singers
Castrati singers have their origins in the church from as early as 1550. The last known castrato, Alessandro Moreschi (1858-1922), was a member of the Sistine Chapel Choir.
The practice of castrati developed through the desire for high voices and the problem of training young boys, only to lose them when their voices broke. Boys with promising voices were selected and castrated prior to puberty in order to preserve their voices. They became particularly prominent in opera seria during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Contemporary Casting of Women in Male Roles
In modern productions of many operas, the pants roles continue to be cast. The reasons are largely historical. Where the role was originally played by a castrato, the options are to cast a woman dressed in male costume, use a counter tenor, or to drop the pitch of the role by an octave and cast a male tenor. Using the latter choice means that the dynamic and colour of the role changes considerably. Counter tenors are comparatively rare, so casting them is not a common solution. Using a woman offers the most authentic sound that is closest to the castrati of the time.
A second practice dates to the mid 1800s, when it was common to write leading male roles for high voices. This was after the decline of the castrati in the early 1800s, so it is thought that these parts were always intended as pants roles.
The other common tradition, which continues into contemporary operatic composition, is the casting of women as children and young adolescents, so again these parts were always intended to be played by women.
Examples of Pants Roles
One of the most well-known pants roles is Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Cherubino is an adolescent page to the Countess Almaviva, constantly in the throes of agonised lust after the women around him. One of the comedic elements in the role is when he dresses as a woman, further confusing the gender issues involved in the part.
Ofeo ed Euridice (1762), by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787), presents a different scenario. The role of Orfeo was written originally for an alto castrato. However, twelve years later, in 1774, Gluck wrote a revision for a French production using a male tenor in the role, as the French had never taken to the notion of the castrati, tending to ridicule the practice. In contemporary productions it is most often cast as a pants role, reviving the style of the original production.
Prince Orlovsky in Die Fledermaus (1874), by Johann Strauss (1825-1899), was written as a pants role for a mezzo soprano. It is an example of a role written intentionally for a woman to play rather than a castrato, and there is no blurring of gender lines by the character dressing up in women’s clothing.
In Der Rosenkavalier (1911), Richard Strauss (1864-1949), the young lover of Feldmarschallin Marie Therese is Octavian, a soprano or high mezzo soprano pants role. Like Cherubino, Octavian dresses as a woman part way through the story, in order to disguise his identity. This poses a very particular challenge to the singer who first has to convince her audience, who know she is female, that the role is male. In disguise as a female, she has to reproduce the awkwardness of a man in drag.
Contemporary Interpretations of Pants Roles
In these operas, traditional costuming can make the illusion of turning a female singer into a male character relatively simple. A traditional Cherubino wears a wig with a ribbon tied ponytail, an ornate suit with knee breeches and stockings, lace collar and cuffs, and buckled shoes, as shown in the image of Catriona Barr in a production by the State Opera of South Australia.
In the 1990 New York setting of The Marriage of Figaro by director Peter Sellars, Jayne West played Cherubino as a typical 90s adolescent. The lanky mezzo wore jeans, sneakers, a long sleeved t-shirt and a baseball cap on backwards, and draped herself around the set with all the lazy arrogance of an average fifteen year old boy. The contemporary clothing offered very little room for the kind of padding and concealing that can be done under the traditional period suit, and demanded of the singer an extremely high level of convincing characterisation.
While pants roles were something of a historical anachronism, they are ultimately a wonderful challenge for modern singers. When women are cast in these roles, they offer audiences a glimpse of how the original operas, with their castrati singers, may have sounded. In those roles always intended as women’s parts, they continue to offer singers an extraordinary opportunity to stretch their acting capacity to achieve the shift of gender.
Karen Finch - Karen is a Sydney based freelance writer, artist and musician. To learn more, click on her name to read her profile.
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