Everything about Breeches Role totally explained
A
breeches role (also
pants role or
trouser role) is a role in which an actress appears in male clothing (
breeches being tight-fitting knee-length pants, the standard male garment at the time breeches roles were introduced). In opera it can also refer to any male character that's sung and acted by a female singer. In the case of a woman playing the role of a young man, the part is often filled by a
mezzo soprano or
contralto.
The operatic concept of the breeches role assumes that the character is male, and the audience accepts him as such, even knowing that the actor is not. By contrast, a female opera character who dresses in male clothing to deceive other characters — that is, who
plays a woman pretending to be a man (for example Leonore in
Fidelio or Gilda in Act III of
Rigoletto) — isn't considered a breeches role.
Because non-musical stage plays generally have no requirements for vocal range, they don't usually contain breeches roles in the same sense as opera. Some plays do have male roles that were written for adult female actors, and (for other practical reasons) are usually played by women (for example
Peter Pan); these could be considered modern-era breeches roles. However, in most cases, the choice of a female actor to play a male character is made at the production level;
Hamlet isn't a breeches role, but
Sarah Bernhardt once played Hamlet
as a breeches role. When a play is spoken of as "containing" a breeches role, this
does mean a role where a female character pretends to be a man and uses male clothing as a disguise, the reverse of its usage in opera.
History
When the London theatres re-opened in 1660, the first professional actresses appeared on the public stage, replacing the
Shakespeare era's boys in dresses. To see real women speak the risqué dialogue of
Restoration comedy and show off their bodies on stage was a great novelty, and soon the even greater sensation was introduced of women wearing male clothes on stage. Out of some 375 plays produced on the London stage between 1660 and 1700, it has been calculated that 89, nearly a quarter, contained one or more roles for actresses in male clothes (see Howe). Practically every Restoration actress appeared in trousers at some time, and breeches roles would even be inserted gratuitously in revivals of older plays.
Some critics, for example Jacqueline Pearson, have argued that these
cross-dressing roles subvert conventional
gender roles by allowing women to imitate the roistering and sexually aggressive behaviour of male Restoration
rakes, but Elizabeth Howe has objected in a detailed study that the male disguise was "little more than yet another means of displaying the actress as a sexual object". The discovery of the character's real gender on stage often involved a discovery of her breasts (the short story that was the basis for
Twelfth Night actually has the Viola character expose herself to reveal her identity and "pretty teats"., and there are many references in prologues and diaries of the period to the fascination of seeing the actress' buttocks, hips, and legs, normally hidden by a skirt, outlined by the male outfit. The epilogue to
Thomas Southerne's
Sir Anthony Love (1690) suggests that it doesn't much matter if the play is dull, as long as it offers a view of the famous breeches actress
Susanna Mountfort's (aka Susanna Verbruggen) legs:
» You'l hear with Patience a dull Scene, to see,
In a contented lazy waggery,
» The Female Mountford bare above the knee.
Breeches roles remained an attraction on the British stage for centuries, but their fascination gradually declined as the difference in real-life male and female clothing became less extreme. They played a part in
burlesque, and are traditional for the
principal boy in
pantomime.
Opera
Historically, the list of roles that's considered to be breeches roles is constantly changing, depending on the tastes of the opera-going public and the choices of the opera director. In early Italian opera, many leading operatic roles were assigned to a
castrato, a male castrated before puberty with a very strong and high voice. These roles were to be played by men. As the practice of castrating boy singers faded, the roles drifted into the trouser mezzo-soprano arena, for only women were trained to sing that high. (See Xerxes below.)
Currently, many of these roles are being reclaimed by men. As the training and use of
counter-tenors becomes more common, there are more men with these very high voices to sing these roles. (They are not as powerful as a castrato, but they're not castrated either.) Some composers, such as the late
Benjamin Britten, have begun writing roles for counter-tenors. Oberon in Britten's
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a great example, but many mezzos have sung this role too, making it also a trouser role.
Casting directors are left with odd choices. Consider the role of the young Prince Orlofsky, in
Die Fledermaus. Both men and women commonly sing the role. When played by a mezzo, the prince looks like a woman, but sounds like a boy. When played by a counter-tenor, he looks like a man, but sings like a woman. This disparity is made even clearer if, as in this case, there's also spoken dialogue.
There is a closely related term called a
skirt role. This is a female character to be played by a male singer, usually for comic or visual effect. These roles are often ugly step-sisters or very old women, and are not as common as trouser roles. Britten's Madwomen in
Curlew River and the Cook in
Prokofiev's
Love of Three Oranges are examples.
Operas with
breeches roles include:
In addition, in
Il Muto a fictional sub-opera of the
Andrew Lloyd Webber musical,
The Phantom of the Opera (and later in
the film), the role of the pageboy, a breeches role, is originally cast for
Christine Daaé, a point of contention for
the Phantom.
Further Information
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