¹ ‘Zito’ means ‘sposo novello‘ in Neapolitan. See Andreoli, Raffaele, Vocabolario napoletano-italiano (1887; rpt. Naples, 1966), 470.Google Scholar

² The sinfonia is missing, as well as two arias sung by the heroine Belluccia. See Weiss, Piero, ‘Ancora sulle origini dell'opera comica: il linguaggio’, in Degrada, Francesco, ed., Studi Pergolesiani I (Stuyvesant, NY, 1986), 128.Google Scholar Six arias and a duet survive from Vinci's first commedia per musica by Aniello Piscopo, Lo cecato fauzo (1719). See Markstrom, Kurt, ‘The Operas of Leonardo Vinci, Napoletano’, Ph.D. diss. (University of Toronto, 1993), 9–11Google Scholar, and 27n3. The score of Li zite 'n galera is reproduced in the Garland Series Italian Opera 1640–1770 (New York, 1979) with a preface by Howard Mayer Brown. For a facsimile of the libretto see Saddumene, Bernardo, Li zite 'n galera: Commeddeja (1722; rpt. New York, 1979).Google Scholar

³ See Meikle, Robert, s.v. ‘Vinci, Leonardo’, in Sadie, Stanley, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980).Google Scholar

⁴ Vinci did in fact write at least twelve comedies but only some of the scores survive in varying degrees of completeness. See Strohm, Reinhard, Italienische Opernarien des frühen Settecento (1720–1730), 2 vols. (Cologne, 1976), II, 236–7.Google Scholar

⁵ In addition to those studies cited above, see also Degrada, F., ‘La commedia per musica a Napoli nella prima metà del Settecento. Una ricerca di base‘, in Atti del XIV congresso della Società Internazionale di Musicologia, 3 (Turin, 1990), 263–74.Google Scholar A critical edition of the libretto of Li zite has also recently appeared. See Gronda, G. and Fabbri, P., eds., Libretti d'opera italiani dal Seicento al Novecento (Milan, 1997), 358–448. Thanks to Bruce Alan Brown for bringing this source to my attention.Google Scholar

⁶ As a sampling of some of the more recent studies on Venetian opera see Pirrotta, Nino, Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), chapters 15–22;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRosand, Ellen, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991);Google Scholar and Heller, Wendy, ‘Chastity, Heroism, and Allure: Women in the Opera of Seventeenth-Century Venice’, Ph.D. diss. (Brandeis University, 1995).Google Scholar

⁷ There are, of course, other repertories to which Neapolitan commedia per musica could be fruitfully compared, especially the lesser-known types of comic opera that flourished in later seventeenth-century Florence and Rome as well as spoken comedy in early eighteenth-century Naples. See Robinson, Michael F., Naples and Neapolitan Opera (1972; rpt. New York, 1984), 189.Google Scholar

⁸ Robinson, , 188.Google Scholar

⁹ Robinson, , 189–90.Google Scholar

¹⁰ By the 1720s some Tuscan was usually incorporated into these dialect operas, serving as a means of signalling a character's social superiority.

¹¹ For a brief summary of other commedia plots in which disguise is a prominent feature see Robinson, 189–93.

¹² Discussion of this topos in Venetian opera – particularly the device of a woman disguising herself as a man – include the studies by Rosand, Ellen, ‘“Ormindo travestito” in Erismena’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 28 (1975), 268–91;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Heller, Wendy, ‘The Queen as King: Refashioning Semiramide for Seicento Venice’, this journal, 5 (1993), 93–114.Google Scholar Examples of the same topos in the commedia dell'arte repertory are included in Flaminio Scala's Il pellegrino fido amante (1611) and other scenarios discussed in Nicoll, Allardyce, The World of Harlequin: A Critical Study of the Commedia dell'Arte (Cambridge, 1963).Google Scholar

¹³ Robinson, , 192.Google Scholar

¹⁴ For an overview of the musical forms and styles used in Li zite see Weiss, ‘Ancora sulle origini’ (see n. 2).

¹⁵ The extent of the use of Neapolitan dialect (as opposed to Tuscan) could vary from commedia to commedia. As a very general rule, only the more ‘serious’ characters sang in Tuscan.

¹⁶ Particular correspondences will be addressed as they arise in the course of the essay.

¹⁷ I would like to thank Wendy Heller for bringing this interesting point to my attention. Robinson (see n. 7, 178f.) pays particular attention to the separating out of comic elements from operas produced in Venice in the late seventeenth century.

¹⁸ For an outline of these character types see Robinson, 190'2.

¹⁹ The influence of both eighteenth-century spoken theatre in Naples and seventeenth-century Spanish drama (the latter perhaps influencing the inclusion of the serious innamorati in commedie) are not, of course, linked to the Venetian repertory. See Robinson, 194–5.

²⁰ In addition, Neapolitan commedie almost always incorporated a tenor playing a ‘drag’ role, but this practice had a direct antecedent in seventeenth-century Venetian opera. A well-known example in the Venetian repertory is Poppea's nurse Arnalta in Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea. Both Arnalta and Meneca (from Li sjte) are older women who, though no longer sexually desirable, continue to allude to sexual desire through puns and jokes.

²¹ Weiss, Piero, s.v. ‘Opera buffa §2: Neapolitan Opera Buffa to c. 1730’, in Sadie, Stanley, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (London, 1992).Google Scholar

²² I refer here to the earlier phase of commedia per musica which used libretti written entirely or predominantly in Neapolitan dialect.

²³ For information on the musical aspects of Li zite see Weiss, ‘Ancora sulle origini’ (see n. 2). Although commedia per musica drew upon the poetic and musical forms of contemporaneous dramma per musica, there was less emphasis on singers' virtuosity in the comic genre, and acting ability was considered paramount. In Li zite, the lack of elaborate (musical) display in the da capo arias as well as the ease and naturalness of the recitative pushes the focus back on to the text itself and the acting skills of individual singers. With regard to the actual singing ability of performers in Neapolitan commedie generally, there are varying accounts. In the early years of the development of the genre (up to about the second decade of the eighteenth century) singing skill was probably secondary to that of acting, and, as Carolyn Gianturco has noted, during this same time period ‘impresarios were more concerned with the quality of the librettos than with the music’. Gianturco, , ‘Naples: A City of Entertainment’, in Buelow, George J., ed., The Late Baroque Era: From the 1680s to 1740 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1993), 120.Google Scholar Yet from the 1720s on the expertise of both composers and singers appears to have increased noticeably; for singers, especially those who took the more serious roles (of the lead innamorati, for example), parts were often more demanding. See also Pipetno, F., ‘Buffe e buffi (considerazioni sulla professionalità degli interpreti di scene buffe ed intermezzi)’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 18 (1982), 241–84.Google Scholar

²⁴ Butler has argued that gender is a kind of social ritual that can be performatively defined: the performativity of such gender ‘rituals’ inheres in their capacity to reflect the political and ideological constraints imposed by those in power at the same time as they allow for the possible subversion of constraint by those acting out such rituals. See Butler, , Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London, 1990),Google Scholar and Butler, , Bodies that Matter. On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York and London, 1993).Google Scholar For the application of Buder's theory to a particular historical (musical) performance see Treadwell, Nina, ‘The Performance of Gender in Cavalieri/Guidiccioni's Ballo “O che nuovo miracolo” (1589)’, Women and Music. A Journal of Gender and Culture 1 (1997), 55–70.Google Scholar Butler does not specifically frame her argument in terms of a ‘dialectic’; for this reading of Butler's work I am indebted to Linda LeMoncheck. For a dialectical approach within the context of feminist philosophy see LeMoncheck, , Loose Women, Lecherous Men: A Feminist Philosophy of Sex (New York and Oxford, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ Despite Li zite's distinction as the first surviving Neapolitan commedia per musica, the opera is regarded as a second-generation comedy because some Tuscan elements are incorporated into the Neapolitan framework. By contrast, first-generation comedies used Neapolitan dialect, characters and settings almost exclusively. (See Markstrom [see n. 2], 16 and Robinson [see n. 7], 193–5.)

²⁶ This is not to deny that these boundaries were also carefully policed. Those involved in ‘negotiating gender boundaries’ might include all those associated with the operatic venture, particularly librettists and singers, but also composers and their audiences. For studies concerned with gender ambiguities in seventeenth-century Venetian opera see, for example, McClary, Susan, ‘Gender Ambiguities and Erotic Excess in Seventeenth-Century Venetian Opera’, in Franko, Mark and Richards, Anne, eds., Actualizing Absence: Performance, Visuality, Writing in press; and Heller, ‘The Queen as King’ (see n. 12).Google Scholar

²⁷ There is, for example, no reference to Neapolitan commedie per musica in a recent collection of essays edited by Blackmer, Corinne E. and Smith, Patricia Juliana, En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera (New York, 1995).Google Scholar

²⁸ Garber, Marjorie, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York and London, 1992).Google Scholar

²⁹ Ibid., 16.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Butler, , Gender Trouble (see n. 24), 137–8.Google Scholar

³² This pre-Enlightenment understanding of sex/gender is expounded in Laqueur, Thomas, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).Google Scholar

³³ McClary, , ‘Gender Ambiguities and Erotic Excess’ (see n. 26).Google Scholar

³⁴ In this quotation and those that follow minor changes have been made to the punctuation and the usage of uppercase and lowercase letters. Accents and apostrophes have been adjusted to conform to modern usage, and the letters ‘j’, ‘f’. and ‘V’ have been modified, where appropriate. Minor typographical errors have been corrected without comment.

³⁵ The phrase ‘Ancora stace tuosto comm'apprimmo?’ could also be translated as ‘Are you [Ciommetella] still as you were before?’ but the general meaning of the phrase is the same.

³⁶ Quoted in McCormick, Ian, ed., Secret Sexualities: A. Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writing (London and New York, 1997), 178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ Ibid., 178.

³⁸ See, for example, the account of the cross-dresser Mary Hamilton in Henry Fielding's The Female Husband (1746) summarised in Friedli, Lynn, ‘”Passing Women”: A Study of Gender Boundaries in the Eighteenth Century’, in Rousseau, G. S. and Porter, Roy, eds., Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment (Chapel Hill, 1988), 238–40. As Friedli notes, the function of Fielding's text ‘is to delineate a female sexuality that is unlimited in its excesses’ and quoting Fielding, this means ‘monstrous, unnatural, diabolical, vicious’.Google Scholar

³⁹ See below for more on this practice.

⁴⁰ Straub, Kristina, ‘The Guilty Pleasures of Female Theatrical Cross-Dressing and the Autobiography of Charlotte Clarke’, in Epstein, Julia and Straub, K., eds., Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity (New York and London, 1991), 151.Google Scholar

⁴¹ In actuality, of course, Ciommetella's three male admirers were not all played by members of the male sex. Although the role of Col'Agnolo was performed by a bass singer and that of Titta Castagna by the male alto Filippo Calantro, Carlo was sung by a female soprano.

⁴² See Bergeron, Katherine, ‘The Castrato as History’ this journal, 8 (1996), 170.Google Scholar

⁴³ The word ‘arma’, as well as meaning weapon, might also refer to ‘anima’, that is, ‘soul’. I have opted to favour the chivalrous connotation suggested by Belluccia/Peppariello's desire to ‘serve her [Ciommetella] with the weapon’.

⁴⁴ Laqueur, (see n. 32), 25.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ From the Galenic viewpoint, which persisted throughout the early modern period, the vagina was thought to be ‘an interior penis, the labia as foreskin, the uterus as scrotum, and the ovaries as testicles’. (Laqueur, 4.) Laqueur describes this phenomenon as t he one-sex model. Although the Aristotelian view did not entertain the notion of inverted genitals for females, Laqueur argues that Aristode's concept of the male sex as the defining entity is closely related to the concept of the one-sex body. See Laqueur, 25–62, and Trumbach, Randolph, ‘London's Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture’, in Body Guards (see n. 40), 118–19.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ See Laqueur, , esp. 122–9, and Trumbach, 118–19.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Laqueur, , 5–6.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Laqueur's explication of the fluidity of gender and biological sex has been explored in the context of seventeenth-century Venetian opera in Wendy Heller's dissertation ‘Chastity, Heroism, and Allure’. See especially her discussion ‘Sex and Carnival’ (27–31), and chapters 6 and 7, which deal with the issue through the characters of Semiramide and Messalina respectively. Susan McClary had earlier referred to the ‘fluidity of gender definition’ in relation to Venetian opera (although not specifically citing Laqueur). See McClary, , ‘Venetian Airs: Review of Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice’, Historical Performance, 4/2 (1991), 109–17, esp. 115–17.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Dekker, Rudolf and de Pol, Lotte van, The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁰ Ibid., 1.

⁵¹ Ibid., 2.

⁵² As stated in the argomento, Carlo ‘appe avuto confedenzia cò Belluccia’.

⁵³ Dekker and van de Pol (see n. 49), 74.

⁵⁴ See especially the extended passages of recitative involving Carlo and Belluccia in Act I scene 12 and Act II scene 15.

⁵⁵ In the argomento, we are told that Carlo believes Belluccia to be dead, having been informed by Belluccia's relatives that she has thrown herself down ‘some well’ out of despair. Thus, despite Carlo's confusion and annoyance over Belluccia/Peppariello's insistence on their topic of discussion, he does not suspect that she is alive and has come in search of him.

⁵⁶ Dugaw, Dianne, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650–1850 (Chicago and London, 1989), xii.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ There are numerous documented cases, especially from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where transvestism revealed some women's defiance of heterosexual norms. See, for example, the cases documented in Dekker and van de Pol (see n. 49), esp. 58–63; Friedli (see n. 38), 238–40; and Trumbach (see n. 45), esp. 125–35 and 137n16. Most research to date has concentrated on documenting cases in the Netherlands, England and France, although there is evidence that the practice of cross-dressing to court other women was widespread throughout Europe. Indeed, the author of The History of the Human Heart (London, 1749) believed that women who lived in hot places such as Italy were more likely than women in cooler climates like that of England to seek pleasures with female hermaphrodites, believed by him to be women with enlarged clitorises. (See Trumbach, 118). The author's reference to heat versus cool suggests the commonly held belief that women's dispositions were more ‘naturally’ cool, rather than hot like that of men. If a woman's disposition was already less cool because of a warmer climate, the probability of her desiring another woman was greater. The belief that same-sex desire originated in Italy was frequently voiced throughout the early modern period. An early reference by the late sixteenth-century French commentator Brantôme states that ‘the fashion was brought from Italy [to France[ by a lady of quality who I will not name’.Google ScholarSee Bourdeille, Pierre de, Seigneur de Brantôme, Les Vies des dames galantes (rpt. Paris, 1962);Google Scholar quoted in Brown, Judith C., Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (New York, 1986), 11 and 168n25.Google Scholar It was an even more common trope in English texts to associate sexual practices among men, such as sodomy, with Italy. See Goldberg, Jonathan, Sodometries: Renaissance Text, Modem Sexualities (Stanford, 1992),Google Scholar and Bray, Alan, ‘Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in Elizabethan England’, in Goldberg, Jonathan, ed., Queering the Renaissance (Durham and London, 1994), 49. There was no standard practice with regard to the punishment of women who courted other women; it varied according to time and place. In the case of Mary Hamilton, for example, she ‘was publicly whipped in four market towns and imprisoned for six months’ (see Friedli, 239), or, in the earlier case of the Netherlander Maeyken Joosten ‘[t]he death penalty was demanded, but the sentence was exile for lifeè (Dekker and van de Pol, 59).Google Scholar

⁵⁸ See Traub's, Valerie brilliant study ‘The (In)Significance of “Lesbian” Desire in Early Modern England’, in Goldberg, , ed., Queering the Renaissance, 77–80. For an easily accessible collection of sources documenting erotic practices between early modern women that do not always rely on a cross-(un)dressed partner see McCormick, (see n. 36) especially the section entitled ‘Sapphic Texts’. Many of the texts were, however, written by male authors, so it is not clear to what extent they may have been designed to titillate the male heterosexual reader.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ That one woman was assuming a transgender identity was obviously hidden from the community at large, but relationships of this sort had to be ultimately ‘discovered’ in order for them to be documented.

⁶⁰ Dekker, and Pol, van de, (see n. 49) 55. Even beyond Dekker and van de Pol's study, the evidence for a reading of this type is considerable. Assuming some form of masculine prerogative (which might or might not include donning male attire) was one important means of expressing female homoerotic desire. Other instances include that discussed in Brown's Immodest Acts (see n. 57). In this case it appears that Benedetta Carlini was able to justify her sexual encounters with another nun to herself and her partner by believing that she was transformed into a male angel by the name of Splenditello, thereby making sense of her attraction to another woman as well as claiming religious justification for the act.Google Scholar

⁶¹ See Dekker, and Pol, van de, esp. chap. 3 ‘Motives and Tradition’.Google Scholar

⁶² See, for example, the second stanza from Belluccia/Peppariello's aria concluding Act I scene 2, as discussed above: ‘Servire la vorria [Ciommetella]/Coll'arma, e co lo core … ’ etc.

⁶³ For further information regarding the innuendoes associated with the word ‘spin’ see Henke, James T., Courtesans and Cuckolds: A Glossary of Renaissance Dramatic Bawdy (Exclusive of Shakespeare) (New York and London, 1979), 250.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ There is also a pun on the word ‘commodetete’ meaning ‘wherewithal’ which not only refers to the financial aspect of ‘keeping a wife’ but also alludes to Belluccia/Peppariello's (lack of) male genitals. Cf. Henke, 298.

⁶⁵ In France, the distinction between sexual practices between women that involved penetration and those that did not was clearly demarcated. The use of a prosthetic device for the purpose of penetration was punishable by death. Cf. Traub (see n. 58), 66f.

⁶⁶ See Traub, , 69–80.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Thanks to Linda LeMoncheck for suggesting this to me.

⁶⁸ The incorporation of a commedia in Li zite is the typical play-within-a-play common in seventeenth-century Venetian opera and harking back to commedia dell'arte scenarios. Despite the indication to the contrary in the synopsis of Li zite in the Garland Series, the commedia does not actually take place, although Saddumene uses the opportunity to introduce further complexity to his plot by having characters cross-dress in preparation for their performances in the commedia. Peppariello is to play the role of Carlo's innamorata; hence the possibility that Carlo will recognise her/him as Belluccia.

⁶⁹ The logical explanation for Titta's more ambiguous stance is that male homoeroticism was a time-honoured Greek tradition whence the pre-Enlightenment notion of woman as partial man partly derived; hence the possibility of male homoeroticism is not entirely eviscerated here. Thanks to Linda LeMoncheck for pointing this out to me. For the connections between classical and early modern male homoeroticism see Saslow, James M., Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art and Society (New Haven and London, 1986).Google Scholar

⁷⁰ The term is used in the feminine plural form in Act II scene 10 by Rapisto to refer to the women (including the double-cross-dressed Belluccia) involved in the play-within-the-play.

⁷¹ The final line of the quoted recitative is missing from Saddumene's libretto but is included in Vinci's score.

⁷² The term ‘nnozzare’ also has the implication of ‘full’ (as well as ‘choke’), in which case the final phrase might very well have implied: men who are ‘hard’ (in the sense of having an erect penis) can make you ‘full’ (that is, fill a woman's vagina). Henke (see n. 63), 119 and 260. The former interpretation (derived from interpreting ‘nnozare’ as choke) better matches the parallelisms between the two stanzas of the aria which contrast desirable versus undesirable men in each strophe.

⁷³ Semmuone de Farco or Simone de Falco was a famous tenor at the Teatro Fiorentini where he performed the aged female roles from c. 1717 until c. 1734. The practice of casting tenors as old women was, of course, extremely popular in seventeenth-century Venetian opera as well as in eighteenth-century commedie. Throughout Li zite, Farco's character Meneca is constantly derided for her/his age, lack of physical beauty, and concomitant lack of sexual appeal. The convention of using tenors to play old women appears to derive, in part, from a cultural assumption that older women are no longer (heterosexually) desirable or fertile; their lack of both sexual desirability and reproductive function can be underscored in the theatrical context by casting men in these roles. For a list of the operas and roles performed by Farco at the Fiorentini see Florimo, Francesco, La scuola musicale di Napoli e i suoi conservatorii, 4 vols. (Turin, 1882), IV, 38–48.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ For further discussion of this paradox see Hare-Mustin, Rachel T. and Marecek, Jeanne, ‘Gender and the Meaning of Difference: Postmodernism and Pyschology’, in Herrmann, Anne C. and Stewart, Abigail J., eds., Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Boulder, 1994), 49–76, esp. the section entided ‘Paradoxes in Gender Theorizing’, 67 f.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ It should be noted that Col'Agnolo's (beardless) shop boy Ciccariello does most of the shaving, thereby making Rapisto more like himself, that is, less manly.

⁷⁶ Thanks to Linda LeMoncheck for suggesting this to me.

⁷⁷ See Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (see n. 6), 119n26. In fact, when Saddumene took his Li zite to Rome in 1729 and had it reset by the composer Giovanni Fischietti, all the soprano roles, including those of the female characters, were played by castrati because of the Roman ban on women on the stage. See Weiss, Piero, s.v. ‘Opera buffa, §3: Northern’ in Sadie, , ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Opera.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Feldman, Martha, ‘Magic Mirrors and the Seria Stage: Thoughts toward a Ritual View’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 48 (1995), 483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁹ Feldman, , 478.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Eco, Umberto, ’The Frames of Comic “Freedom” ’, in Sebeok, Thomas A., ed. with Erickson, Marcia E., Carnival! (Berlin and New York, 1984), 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸¹ I refer here to the historical approach of Thomas Laqueur regarding the fluidity of sex/gender categories at this time which, interestingly enough, has strong parallels with Judith Butler's line of thought which questions the notion of an ‘original’ or ‘primary gender identity’.

⁸² Margaret Reynolds suggests that trouser roles begin with the part of Sextus in Handel's Julius Caesar (1724) but clearly Li zite and other Neapolitan commedie per musica predate this work. (See Reynolds, , ‘Ruggiero's Deceptions, Cherubino's Distractions’, in Blackmer, and Smith, , ed., En Travesti [see n. 27], 134.)Google ScholarThe cast listings of Florimo show that women had been singing the roles of men on a regular basis at the Teatro Fiorentini from at least 1707 and at the Bartolomeo, Teatro S. from c. 1696, although in all likelihood the practice had been established decades earlier. See Florimo (see n. 73), IV, 6f. and 34f.Google Scholar

⁸³ This was definitely the case in Restoration England where the titillation of seeing women dressed in breeches in the (spoken) theatre increased the frequency of the device. As Straub has noted, ‘[s]ometimes competing managers did not stop with casting single roles, but rather … presented whole plays “all by women, as formerly all by men”’. Straub (see n. 40), 143. Straub quotes Wright, James, Historia Histrionica: An Historical Account of the English Stage (London: 1699), cliii.Google Scholar See also Bullough, Vern L. and Bullough, Bonnie, Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender (Philadelphia,1993), 86, who quote a contemporary response to the practice by Bernard Mandeville: ‘Upon the Stage it [female cross-dressing] is done without Reproach, and the most Virtuous Ladies will dispense with it in an Actress, tho’ every Body has a full view of her Legs and Thighs, but if the same Woman, as soon as she has Petticoats on again, should show her Leg to a Man as high as her Knee, it would be a very immodest Action, and every body will call her impudent for it’.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Piero Weiss has also suggested that the role of Ciccariello was sung by a female soprano. See Weiss, ‘Ancora sulle origini’ (see n. 2), 144.

⁸⁵ At the suggestion of Ciommetella, a short impromptu scene is enacted between Ciccariello and Rapisto in Act III scene 9.

⁸⁶ The designation ‘servetta’ is included in Vinci's score, but not in Saddumene's libretto which merely indicates ‘Ciccariello sulo [sic] da femmena’.

⁸⁷ In modern terms Rapisto's discomfort might be described as ‘homosexual panic’, a term first coined by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.

⁸⁸ Orgel, Stephen, ‘Gendering the Crown’, in Grazia, Margreta de, Quilligan, Maureen and Stallybrass, Peter, eds., Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture (Cambridge, 1996), 148.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ There could also, of course, be several different interpretations of any given line, and the singer-actor could choose to ‘play up’ one or more of these interpretations. The discussion of Meneca's aria from Act I scene 8 shows the possibility of multiple interpretations.

⁹⁰ It should also be noted that the type of audiences attending the Teatro Fiorentini (one of the homes of comic opera in Naples) where Li zite was first performed, differed from those who attended venues reserved for serious opera. At the Fiorentini there was more of a cross-section of classes present, as the following account written by a chronicler in 1724 makes clear: ‘the new opera in the Neapolitan language that began Saturday evening of last week was done to the greatest satisfaction not only of the nobility but to every kind of person’. Quoted from Diario ordinario, n. 1107 (29 August 1724); cited in Gianturco (see n. 23), 121–2. Gianturco suggests that, in contrast to court-sponsored opera seria, these Neapolitan commedie were aimed especially at lower-class audiences. To some extent, this aspect might explain the actor-singers’ ability to ‘get away’ (so to speak) with the more sexually suggestive aspects of their roles.

⁹¹ McClary, , ‘Gender Ambiguities and Erotic Excess’.Google Scholar

⁹² Florimo, (see n. 73), IV, 40–3.Google Scholar Ferrara's first two roles at the Fiorentini were female roles, but following these she began a spate of male roles. Interestingly, during a temporary absence from the Fiorentini by Ferrara in 1724, Rosa Cerillo (who played Ciommetella in Li zite) played several travesti roles at the Fiorentini but she appears not to have continued the practice. Undoubtedly the success of particular actors in their role type was an aspect that influenced casting choices, as evidenced by the success of Semmuone de Farco who played the aged female roles at the Fiorentini for at least eighteen years.

⁹³ This was certainly the case in England. Cf. Friedli (see n. 38), 240 and Straub (see n. 40), 143–5. One of the most famous accounts is the autobiographical Narrative of the Life of Mrs Charlotte Clarke (1745; rpt. Gainesville, Florida, 1969). Comparatively speaking, there has, to date, been little research on Italian female transvestism.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Brown, H. M., preface to Li zite 'n galera.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Unlike serious opera, comic opera was supposed morally to instruct its audience by lampooning or making ridiculous the vices of its protagonists. With regard to more serious vices, librettists were cautioned not to overdo the humorous depiction in case this prompted actual imitation, and hence a decline in public morals. See the commentators mentioned in Robinson (see n. 7), 191.