Throughout the history of opera as we know it today, considered to have started in the early 17th century with Jacopo Peri’s Euridice, the concept of gender has never been binary. Even though transness as we define it today was not present in the previous centuries, gender identity and presentation has been bent and manipulated in different ways. From the castrati to pants roles, the history and the present of the opera is full of trans icons that are worth looking more into.
The tradition of castrati, male singers that have undergone surgical castration before reaching puberty in order to keep their high range voice, is actually older than opera. According to the Metropolitan Opera, the earliest records of castrati date back to 1550s, for performing high parts of religious choir music as women were forbidden to participate. In opera, castrati were often cast to perform the heroic male lead roles because their high voices were considered to be very manly and desirable. A few of the most famous castrato roles are Orfeo from the opera L’Orfeo ed Euridice by Monteverdi and Nerone from L’incoronazione de Poppea.
In the late 18th century, the tradition started to decline, giving way to pants roles, female opera singers performing traditionally male roles. Mezzo-sopranos and contraltos— lower and mid-range, traditionally female voice types— were asked to take over roles that would have been previously played by men. Eventually, many of the operatic castrati and pants roles were rewritten for male tenors.
Today, characters in opera are sung by people of all genders. Unfortunately, the opera scene has been saturated with heteronormativity and there are not many successful, internationally acclaimed trans opera singers. Slowly but surely, however, they are appearing on the opera stages, especially if you know where to look.
Lucas Bouk is a trans lyric baritone from New York. After coming out as a transgender man in 2018, he was cast in the opera Stonewall, which according to Playbill is “the first opera to feature a transgender character specially created for a transgender singer.” He has been on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) since 2020, but before that, HRT “did not seem like a viable option for him” as Bouk could not “imagine a future in which I could actually be comfortable onstage and offstage,” he commented in Tamzin Elliott’s article for San Francisco Classical Voice.
Sam Taskinen is a Finnish bass-baritone (low range) opera singer. Taskinen has played opera characters of a wide gender range, but coming out as trans at 32 has freed them. “Men are really fun to play now that [I] don’t have to pretend to be one in [my] own life,” Taskinen commented to San Francisco Classical Voice. After spending some time working in Metz, France, she is now back in Germany working as a freelance singer.
Elijah McCormack is a Grammy-winning Baroque opera singer, referring to himself as a ‘male soprano.’ In his career as an opera singer, he has performed in many operas and oratorios (operas on religious topics), as well as with ensembles, such as Seraphic Fire, The Crossing, ANIMA Early Music and many more. McCormack started his classical training in his teens being part of choirs, and to this day he continues his “work with church choirs and other vocal ensembles, especially enjoying Tudor music and other early modern polyphonic works.”
Nikola Printz is a mezzo-soprano opera, jazz, and cabaret singer from California. As mentioned on their website, their recent opera roles consist of Carmen in Carmen, and Dido in Dido and Aeneas with Opera San Jose, Orfeo in Orfeo ed Eurydice with West Edge Opera, as well as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Olga in Eugene Onegin, and Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro. Performing both male and female roles has helped Printz with their gender exploration: “I don’t get dysphoria from femininity or masculinity. I can get euphoria from either,” they told San Francisco Classical Voice.
Teiya Kasahara is “Nikkei Canadian settler transgender opera singer and interdisciplinary theater creator based in Tkarón:to (colonially known as Toronto, Canada),” as stated on the singer’s website. With nearly twenty years of singing, Kasahara has performed as “the Queen of the Night Die Zauberflöte, Cio-Cio San Madama Butterfly, and the soprano solos in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Verdi’s Requiem.” Speaking to San Francisco Classical Voice they reflected on the gender expectations they face in the opera industry and in life, as they are “hired to do is so strictly feminine and female … and limited to a certain expression of femininity.” The Mt. A Conservatory of Music is excited to welcome Kasahara in the fall of 2025, so stay tuned for their visit with workshops and a recital.
