What Is The “Pants Role” In Opera?

Description
Ever heard of the “pants role” aka “trouser roles” or “breeches parts” in opera? Well, this goes back centuries, with quite the backstory. Join me, as we take a minute to get the scoop!

Fun Fact
Why did Baroque audiences buy into women playing masculine heroic parts in opera? The most conceivable theory is that Baroque opera was not concerned with realism. Further, these parts were designed to showcase vocal virtuosity, as opposed to lending credence to the plot or character.

About Steven
Steven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more.

A Note To Music Students et al.
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Transcript

Pants Roles also known as trouser roles are basically a male role played by a woman. 

In the baroque period, after the practice that created castrati singers were banned, these operatic roles needed to be filled. 

Enter mezzo-sopranos who were a perfect fit for the voice range. They were cast in strong heroic male roles. Audiences didn’t question the gender switch, because they understood the need to fill this vocal void.

In the classical era, women playing men was utilized as “comic relief”. The most notable being Cherubino in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.

But then we came full circle when Richard Strauss gave women the heroic male lead once again. He even created romantic roles for women such as Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier.

In the 19th century, the pants role took a back seat. It was time for the tenor voice to take centre stage embodied in the masculine hero figure.

Today there are numerous revivals of early operas, so we can still appreciate the pants role played out in both heroes and their sidekicks.