ABSTRACT
Opera’s homosocial duets require a little digging in order to discover their homoeroticism. Opera, in its glorious paradoxical tangle of undifferentiated desire, provides a fruitful outlet for both minoritizing and universalizing impulses. Opera’s queerness rarely figures in analyses of tragic opera queens and gay male desire. In the field of overt gay expression in opera, women have a very slight lead on men. Opera draws its stories from other realms of narrative: spoken theater, prose fiction, occasionally film, even the nightly news. With the increasing visibility of lesbians and gay men in all of the media, perhaps other composers and librettists will eventually follow Wallace and Korie’s suit, depicting differing sexualities in more than a token manner. Ethan Mordden offers another powerful evocation of opera-as-disease in his history of the diva cult. Opera draws its stories from other realms of narrative: spoken theater, prose fiction, occasionally film, even the nightly news.
