ABSTRACT
Opera singers serve as sex symbols for an audience that is reluctant to admit its vulnerability to such base pandering in the more popular realms of film and television. Even theorists who actively acknowledge opera’s sexual appeal refuse to admit the powerful attraction of the singer’s body. The body becomes a physical manifestation of the voice, it is eroticized by the voice, but the body of the singer remains an integral part of opera’s sexual display. Theatrical presentation in all of its forms eroticizes the body of the performer; whether on the spoken stage, in a rock concert, or on film or television, the performing body, placed on a stage or screen for audience consumption, becomes an object of sexual desire. Opera audiences applaud more than any other kind of audienee, because the curtain call is itself part of opera’s erotic display of the singer’s body, perhaps its most important part.
