LOOKING AT OPERA THROUGH A QUEER LENS

SEATTLE OPERA CELEBRATES PRIDE MONTH, POST 1 OF 3

Hanna Hipp (Isolier) and Sarah Coburn (Adele). 

When Lindy Hume directed Rossini’s 1828 opera Count Ory at Seattle Opera in 2016, gender fluidity was a key element of the production, evident in the big hair and crotch-hugging costumes reminiscent of 1970s glam rock. In the trousers role of Isolier, Hanna Hipp’s androgyny was especially striking. Her steamier moments with Adele (Sarah Coburn) suggested a queer romance between a princess and a more feminine David Bowie à la Labyrinth. 

“Seattle Opera’s new production of Rossini’s final comic opera is about the fluidity of gender, how we often don’t look like who we are, the vicissitudes of lust, and the lengths people go to get in the sack with someone,” wrote Rebecca Brown in The Stranger. 

Composers like Rossini and Mozart undoubtedly enjoyed a little transgressive frisson when creating trouser roles in operatic rom-coms like Count Ory or The Marriage of Figaro. But they likely had no idea what these characters might come to mean to viewers centuries later. In a time where people are living increasingly more liberated lives in terms of both gender expression and sexual orientation, the possibilities of queerness on the opera stage are endless—both through retellings of traditional operas and through new work.