work of opera : genre, nationhood, and sexual difference

Literary and cultural critics and musicologist explore the construction of gender and sexuality in opera, from the subversive aesthetics of seventeenth-century opera to the nation-building fantasies of nineteenth-century grand opera. Themes are among others: the castrato, the contralto tradition, female homosociality in Norma and Aida, structures of identity and difference in Carmen, nationalisme and sexuality in Wagner's Ring.