A New Low? Casting Women In Tenor Roles Is Not Going To Fix Opera’s Gender Imbalance

Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston responds to an article arguing that we might soon be seeing female tenors on the opera stage: “‘Looser gender divisions in casting’ may well be possible in Shakespearean theatre, where speaking rather than singing voices are involved, but there are no female professional opera singers, even those of us who sing in the contralto range, begging to sing tenor roles such as Rodolfo (in Puccini’s La Bohème) or Alfredo (in Verdi’s La Traviata) at pitch.” (Or even transposed, for that matter.)