ABSTRACT
The fictional narrative disappears, leaving only the underlying sexual narrative, the erotic negotiations that have been happening all evening between the bodies on either side of the proscenium. The sexual excesses that opera presents throughout its performance, and which play on opera’s wide range of erotic ambiguities—cross-dressing, the seductive duet, the musical orgasm—get thrown into a whole new level of crisis by the ending. Opera’s sexuality permits multiple readings more readily than realistic theater, and it resolves less often to a single, unambiguous vision of “reality” for the audience to accept. Opera in the late twentieth century has an advantage over spoken theater in playing the postmodern game. Opera can survive the ravages of static repertory, inept singers, misogynist stereotypes, electronic mediation, and anything else time cares to throw in its way, because it connects with its audience through the eternal language of sex.
