ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the extent to which one can trace any lines of connection between these two figures, these two historically and musically different worlds. It argues that by understanding the tenor hero and the gendered politics of his sound-world, readers can better understand the emergence of the 1960s Broadway woman and the politics she mobilises, insofar as her soundworld inverts some of the principles of his by utilising a similar musical device. Indeed, given the tendency with which these climactic high notes are extended longer and less supported orchestrally than their soprano counterparts' climaxes, there is a sense in which the exposure is even greater for the tenor. But what these high notes stage, in both opera and musical theatre, is not simply the high drama of the narrative moment, but that of a set of dyadic tensions among excess, frame, vulnerability and domination.
