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Cross-dressing in music and opera refers to musical performers or opera singers portraying a character of the opposite gender. It is parallel to cross-dressing in film and television and draws on a long history of cross-gender acting.
An entire cross-dressing genre of operatic roles, called "breeches roles" (aka trouser or pants roles) or travesti . These are male roles performed by women, typically mezzo-sopranos but occasionally by sopranos. Some female opera singers specialize in these types of roles.
One artistic reason for breeches roles was that some storylines included young boy characters, but the actual performance required an adult's vocal strength and stage experience in addition to a high, boyish voice. Women were thus better suited to these roles than actual boys. Some examples of these roles are Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro , Siebel in Faust , and Hansel in Hansel and Gretel . Other breeches roles were created due to the need for an adult male character to seem other-worldly (Orpheus in Orfeo ed Euridice ) or unmanly (Prince Idamante in Idomeneo ). In some cases, the casting of a woman may have been an excuse to have an attractive actress appear in tight-fitting trousers.[ citation needed ] During the Grand Opera era, women typically worn voluminous dresses onstage. Some male operatic roles originally written to be sung in the voice range of castrati (men castrated in boyhood, whose voices never descended into the normal male register) are now usually cast with female singers in male costume.
Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio , is unusual in that it features a female character who cross-dresses as part of the plot. The woman disguises herself as a young man as part of a plan to rescue her husband from prison. In The Marriage of Figaro, Cherubino dresses as a girl to avoid army duty. The part of Cherubino is thus played by a woman, who plays a man who dresses as a woman.
In the early 20th century, German composer Richard Strauss included a major trouser role in two operas: the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos and Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier .
Cross-dressing is the act of wearing clothes traditionally or stereotypically associated with a different gender. From as early as pre-modern history, cross-dressing has been practiced in order to disguise, comfort, entertain, and express oneself.
A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men, and have been a part of gay culture.
Drag kings have historically been mostly female performance artists who dress in masculine drag and personify male gender stereotypes as part of an individual or group routine. As documented in the 2003 Journal of Homosexuality, in more recent years the world of drag kings has broadened to include performers of all gender expressions. A typical drag show may incorporate dancing, acting, stand-up comedy and singing, either live or lip-synching to pre-recorded tracks. Drag kings often perform as exaggeratedly macho male characters, portray characters such as construction workers and rappers or they will impersonate male celebrities like Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Tim McGraw. Drag kings may also perform as personas that do not clearly align with the gender binary. Drag personas that combine both stereotypically masculine and feminine traits are common in modern drag king shows.
Transvestism is the practice of dressing in a manner traditionally or stereotypically associated with a different gender. In some cultures, transvestism is practiced for religious, traditional, or ceremonial reasons. The term is considered outdated in Western cultures, especially when used to describe a transgender or gender-fluid person.
Drag is a performance of exaggerated femininity, masculinity, or other forms of gender expression, usually for entertainment purposes. Drag usually involves cross-dressing. A drag queen is someone who performs femininely and a drag king is someone who performs masculinely. Performances often involve comedy, social satire, and at times political commentary. The term may be used as a noun as in the expression in drag or as an adjective as in drag show.
A breeches role is one in which an actress appears in male clothing. Breeches, tight-fitting knee-length pants, were the standard male garment at the time these roles were introduced. The theatrical term travesti covers both this sort of cross-dressing and also that of male actors dressing as female characters. Both are part of the long history of cross-dressing in music and opera and later in film and television.
Travesti is a theatrical character in an opera, play, or ballet performed by a performer of the opposite sex.
A gender bender is a person who dresses up and presents themselves in a way that defies societal expectations of their gender, especially as the opposite sex. Bending expected gender roles may also be called a genderfuck.
Drag in film has followed a long history of female impersonation on English stage, and made its appearance in the early days of the silent films. Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel brought the tradition from the English music halls when they came to America with Fred Karno's comedy troupe in 1910. Both Chaplin and Laurel occasionally dressed as women in their films. Even the beefy American actor Wallace Beery appeared in a series of silent films as a Swedish woman. The Three Stooges, especially Curly, sometimes appeared in drag in their short films. The tradition has continued for many years, usually played for laughs. Only in recent decades have there been dramatic films which included cross-dressing, possibly because of strict censorship of American films until the mid-1960s. One early exception was Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Murder!, where the murderer is a transvestite who wears particularly frilly dresses and petticoats. Cross-gender acting, on the other hand, refers to actors or actresses portraying a character of the opposite gender.
Outside Western cultures, men's clothing commonly includes skirts and skirt-like garments; however, in the Americas and much of Europe, skirts are usually seen as feminine clothing and socially stigmatized for men and boys to wear, despite having done so for centuries. While there are exceptions, most notably the cassock and the kilt, these are not really considered 'skirts' in the typical sense of fashion wear; rather they are worn as cultural and vocational garments. People have variously attempted to promote the fashionable wearing of skirts by men in Western culture and to do away with this gender distinction.
Joan of Arc, a French historical figure executed by the English for heresy in 1431, is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. Joan accompanied an army during the Hundred Years War, adopting the clothing of a soldier, which ultimately provided a pretense for her conviction and execution. Whether her crossdressing and lifestyle have implications for her sexuality or gender identity is debated.
Cross-gender acting, also called cross-gender casting or cross-casting, refers to actors or actresses portraying a character of the opposite sex. It is distinct from both transgender and cross-dressing character roles.
Cross-dressing as a literary motif is well attested in older literature but is becoming increasingly popular in modern literature as well. It is often associated with character nonconformity and sexuality rather than gender identity.
This article details the history of cross-dressing, the act of wearing the clothes of the sex or gender one does not identify with.
Božo Vrećo is a Bosnian musician.
Zaldy Goco, also known mononymously as Zaldy, is a Filipino-American fashion designer. In 1995, he was featured as a model in a British television advertisement for Levi's. Zaldy was named one of Out magazine's Out 100 in 2006. He was the costume designer for Michael Jackson's This Is It tour, Lady Gaga's Monster Ball Tour, and Britney Spears's Femme Fatale Tour. Zaldy designed the costumes for the Cirque du Soleil shows Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour, Michael Jackson: One, and Volta. He was also the head designer for Gwen Stefani's fashion line L.A.M.B. He has received five Emmy nominations, winning in 2017, 2018, and 2019 for Outstanding Costumes for a Variety, Nonfiction, or Reality Programming due to his work on RuPaul's Drag Race.
Social standards typically restrict people's dress according to gender. Trousers were traditionally a male form of dress, frowned upon for women. However, during the 1800s, female spies were introduced, and Vivandières wore a certain uniform with a dress over trousers. Women activists during that time would also decide to wear trousers; for example, Luisa Capetillo, a women's rights activist and the first woman in Puerto Rico to wear trousers in public.
This article addresses the history of transgender people across the British Isles in the United Kingdom, the British colonies and the Kingdom of England until the present day. Transgender people were historically recognised in the UK by varying titles and cultural gender indicators, such as dress. People dressing and living differently from their sex assignment at birth and contributing to various aspects of British history and culture have been documented from the 14th century to the present day. In the 20th century, advances in medicine, social and biological sciences and transgender activism have influenced transgender life in the UK.
"Where's the Dress" is a song by American country music singers Moe Bandy and Joe Stampley. It was released in 1984 as a single from The Good Ol' Boys — Alive and Well, their collaborative album on Columbia Records. The song is a satire of Boy George and Culture Club.
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