[trouser role, pants role (Amer.)] (Fr. travesti; Ger. Hosenrolle; It. travestito).
A term used to define an operatic or theatrical male role played by a woman; the French and Italian terms apply equally to the converse (see Travesty). It is not defined in traditional dictionaries but its use is recorded by 1865 (A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 7/1970/R).
In the 17th and 18th centuries important male roles intended for Castrato singers were in some instances sung by women, and some male roles were written expressly for female singers. Male roles written by Handel for women include Goffredo (Rinaldo, 1711), Dardano (Amadigi, 1715) and the title role in Radamisto (1720). In Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito (1791) the secondary male part was written for a soprano. As the castrato gradually disappeared, his mantle fell initially on the prima donna contralto (or more rarely soprano) who inherited his title of ‘musico’ (see Primo musico). Several of Rossini’s breeches parts fall into this category, for example the title role in Tancredi (1813) and Arsace in Semiramide (1823); the last important Italian breeches part is that of Romeo in Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830), written for Giuditta Grisi.
From early times, boys and ‘beardless youths’, especially pages, were often written as breeches parts. Examples include Telemachus (Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse, 1640) and Sextus (Handel’s Giulio Cesare, 1724; later rewritten for a tenor). The convention of the breeches part is used to special purpose in operas where an adolescent boy is the wooer of a woman inadequately appreciated by her husband, such as Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro or Oktavian in Der Rosenkavalier. In these instances, and elsewhere (Isolier in Rossini’s Le comte Ory), the comedy and eroticism inherent in the convention are intensified when the ‘male’ character is induced to don female costume. Other important breeches parts in Italian opera include Oscar in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera (1859) and Walter in Catalini’s La Wally (1892). Outside Italy, breeches roles are usually confined to pre-adult characters. Examples include, in French opera, Ascanio in Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini (1838), Siébel in Gounod’s Faust (1859) and Nicklausse in Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann (1881); in German opera, Hänsel in Humperdinck’s opera (1893) and the Composer in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos (1916); in Russian opera, Fyodor in Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1868–9); and in operetta, Orlofsky in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus (1874). Breeches parts are less common in modern opera: recent examples are Caliban in Eaton’s The Tempest (1985) and Cherubino in Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (1991, a sequel to Le nozze di Figaro).
Operatic situations where female characters disguise themselves in male costume (such as Leonora in Fidelio or Gilda in Rigoletto) are not true breeches parts, although the woman’s ability to pass unrecognized by the other characters is made more credible by the existence of the historical convention.
C.E. Blackmer and P.J. Smith, eds.: En travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera (New York, 1995)
OWEN JANDER, ELLEN T. HARRIS