Effeminate heroes and female warriors in love in the venetian libretti at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries: between cross-casting and en travesti roles

The custom of using male performers for female vocal roles is a phenomenon that began in 17th century dramma per musica and then consolidated and lasted until the late 18th century, especially in Roman theatres, where women were forbidden to perform by papal decree. In Venice, on the other hand, female roles were assigned to female singers since castrati played the male protagonists. The history of opera in the early 18th century is also full of women who performed with equal ease in both male and female roles, by virtue of vocal and acting peculiarities that made them suitable for embodying certain characters. Prodromes of this phenomenon can be traced as early in a number of operas set to music on the stages of Venice and Bologna in the 1680s, characterised by specific dramaturgical features: among them, the tendency to construct plots centred on the theatrical topos of the assumption of a simulated identity through disguise with a change of gender. This paper examines some case studies that document, in the second half of the 17th century, the auroral phases of a phenomenon that was much more widespread in the following century.