A first! Another door thrown open! Another marginalized group represented!
Lucia Lucas makes her debut in Don Giovanni at Tulsa Opera tonight, making her the first trans woman to perform a principal opera role in the US.
Lucia Lucas is a transgender woman who has a baritone voice. And she is about to make her US debut, singing the title role in Mozart‘s Don Giovanni.
First ever trans woman to play a principal man in an opera! And the title role at that!
Artistic director of Tulsa Opera, Tobias Picker said: “Making history, Tulsa Opera presents baritone, Lucia Lucas in her American operatic debut as a transgender woman. Lucia Lucas’ appearance here will mark the first time a trans woman has performed a principal role on the operatic stage in the United States.”
And not only that but it’s kind of trans doubled, if not squared. A trans woman playing a male part…it breaks every taboo there’s ever been. So transgressivothrilling!
Comments
11 responses to “First ever trans woman to play Don Giovanni”
Just think how it will blow the normies’ minds to see someone they stupidly took to be male playing a male role!
My brain is tired. I thought initially this was a woman who identified as a man, and was singing a baritone part. I was all set to reminisce about comedian Anna Russell singing baritone arias. Then I realized it was a man singing a male part while nonetheless claiming to be a woman; go home, nothing to see here, not even as interesting as a male soprano singing a castrato role.
How can you say that, it’s a first!!
I saw a great production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” two summers back in Ashland, OR, with a woman playing Falstaff. That was fun, she portrayed the character with the all the bawdiness and petard-hoisting it deserves. Also, the well-known Deaf actor Howie Seago (Star Trek TNG, among many many other roles) played the Host of the Garter Inn.
But this story is…well, to be honest, meh. The singer has a baritone voice, which I believe is proper to play the role of li’l Donny G. Okay, and so?
I dunno. Where will it all end?
https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeare-and-gender-the-womans-part
How do they know it’s a first? How do they know they haven’t been misgendering trans women operatic singers for centuries? How DARE they assume?
Good point, maddog1129. For all we know, virtually all “male” opera singers were transwomen passing as male.
Re all-women Shakespeare: my wife and I saw a hilarious play, Into The Breeches, that centers on a WW2 community theater performing Henry IV and Henry V with women playing all the male roles and the sole male actor playing female roles.
Apologies for the digression.
Why does this sound like some operatic version of Victor/Victoria?
Amazing! Why are you guys not impressed? Who could have predicted a trans woman’s voice would fall into the male range so easily?? Oh, my god, I wonder what other hidden traits trans women might turn out to have. Athleticism! Physical strength! Cycling! Australian Football! Sexually assaulting women! The sky’s the limit.
Gosh, trans women are just so physically talented, and so much more interesting and sparkly than the shrewish originals.
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maddog #6, Skeletor #7,
Obviously they are all bearded trans women. We know this because they are into opera, which is an interest more associated with women than men. This is the same method by which we know Joan d’Arc was a trans man; the logic is airtight.
Well, Lucas is a reasonably sound Verdi baritone, going by the linked clip. Don Giovanni isn’t really a role for that voice type, though its often sung by one; e.g. Sherril Milnes, Lawrence Tibbett.