Les implications du travestissement dans I Capuleti e i Montecchi de Vincenzo Bellini by Isabelle Schwartz-Gastine

“…Bellini and Felice Romani, his librettist, were certainly not influenced by the English bard, but by a common source, book 4 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, when they composed the score and lyrics of their opera in the 1820s. According to baroque Italian operatic conventions, the part of the lover should have been performed by a castrato so that his voice could merge perfectly with that of the soprano heroine. …”
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