Travesti (theatre)

As a boy player, Alexander Cooke is thought to have created many of Shakespeare's principal female roles, as well as Agrippina in Ben Jonson's Sejanus His Fall.

[9] With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, women began to appear on the English stage, although some female roles continued to be played by boys and young men, including romantic leads.

The use of castrati for both male and female roles was particularly strong in the Papal States, where women were forbidden from public stage performances until the end of the 18th century.

[16] Azio Corghi's 2005 opera Il dissoluto assolto, which incorporates story elements from Mozart's Don Giovanni, casts a countertenor in the role of the mannequin of Donna Elvira.

[17] The portrayal of women by male dancers was very common in Renaissance court ballet[18] and has continued into more modern times, although primarily restricted to comic or malevolent female characters.

"[19] Another French traveller that year, Joseph-Thomas, comte d'Espinchal, asked himself: "What impression can one have of ballet in which the prima ballerina is a young man in disguise with artificial feminine curves?

According to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, although "an almost indispensable element of burlesque was the display of attractive women dressed in tights, often in travesty roles ... the plays themselves did not normally tend to indecency.

[27] The practice of women performing en travesti in operas became increasingly common in the early 19th century as castrato singers went out of fashion and were replaced by mezzo-sopranos or contraltos in the young masculine roles.

However, travesti mezzo-sopranos had been used earlier by both Handel and Mozart, sometimes because a castrato was not available, or to portray a boy or very young man, such as Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro.

In 20th-century opera, composers continued to use women to sing the roles of young men, when they felt the mature tenor voice sounded wrong for the part.