ransvestia

and sometimes as Diana. In the production which I saw, Jupiter has a staff of office which he always carries. when he is supposedly dis- guised as Diana (who is also in the opera herself), then the actress playing that part carries his staff and the audience understands that she is really Jupiter in disguise. When the actress is playing the part of the real Diana herself then she does not carry the staff. This arrangement is explained to the audience in a program note. And very disappointing, too. However, I have seen a photograph of a recent production of La Calisto in Germany in which the actor playing Jupiter did really dress as Diana (although his costume was hardly conventional street wear) so it can be done.

And so to actual on-stage impersonations by males. The only one I have seen is Comte Ory by Rossini. Here Comte Ory aims to seduce the very virtuous sister of a nobleman who is absent on a crusade. In order to penetrate her castle stronghold he disguises his retainers as nuns and with himself as the Mother Superior represents that they are on a pilgrimage. Because of a thunderstorm they are admitted to the castle and given food but their disguise is penetrated when the liquor, carred in by some of the "nuns," overcomes their discretion and they all become hilariously riotous.

A work I should like to see is Mavra by Stravinsky. In this a rich young woman, in order to see more of her soldier boyfriend, intro- duces him into her all-woman household as her cook. All goes well in this familiar situation which, as a plot, might have come straight from the fiction pages of Transvestia, until he is caught shaving and has to run for it.

Two others, of which I know virtually nothing, are Curlew River, by Britten, in which the part of the Madwoman is sung by a tenor, and Il Campielo, in which, apparently, there is a fight in a market between two women, these parts also being taken by tenors. Another oddity is Mamelles De Tiresias, by Poulenc, in which, so far as I understand, the hero and heroine change functions and he has a large number of babies, but whether they changes clothes or not I don't know.

Even as I've been writing this I've read a review of a production of Le Convenienze e le Inconvenienze Teatrali by Donizetti. This is apparently produced in Germany as, would you believe, Vive La Mamma, the Mamma of the title being a bass. So far that's all I know of it.

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