Course description
This interdisciplinary and intermedial course, straddling ancient literature and art history from a Gender Studies perspective, will look at the reception of female mythological figures in Italian opera. It will offer a journey through the texts of classical antiquity and their reception, which will allow us to gain an appreciation of the development of Gender Studies as an academic discipline. The aim of the course is also to confront the critical questions and concepts that have been asked by scholars of feminist and Gender Studies in different time periods. It will provide students with the critical tools to analyze the construction of gender in our own society through a historical introduction to the ways in which gender relations and gender identity have been theorized from the eighteenth century to the present day.

Starting from the premise that myth is a living, moving entity that is transformed through its many reuses, we will look at the destiny of mythological or historical heroines such as Antigone, Iphigenia, Eurydice, Medea and Lucretia: all female figures associated with the themes of innocence, violence, amorous desire and revenge, who question gender relations and allow for the reversal of feminine-masculine roles. Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Livy, Virgil, Ovid and Seneca, as well as Jacopo Peri, Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli and their librettists, Henry Purcell, Georg Friedrich Handel and Benjamin Britten, have told, staged and set to music the stories of these heroines from their respective gendered and culturally rooted perspectives.

The course will offer a diachronic reading of a selection of ancient works, focusing on the variations of myths from Greece to Rome, according to the literary genres that appropriate them, and an analysis of their reception in opera. The aim will be to understand the history of the classical tradition from a Gender Studies perspective, highlighting ideological, societal and cultural changes.

The course will provide an opportunity to delve into the history of Italian opera, more specifically in Venice, in its relations with its powerful neighbors, in particular Florence and Mantua. The course aims to open up a more general reflection on the place of women in artistic creation and performance. In particular, we will look at the question of castrati in Italian opera and that of men's roles sung by women, alto or mezzo-soprano.

Learning outcomes

• Students will acquire a general knowledge of ancient culture and literature.
• Students will acquire a general knowledge of the history of reception.
• Students will acquire a general knowledge of the history of opera.
• Students will acquire a historical overview of Gender Studies and familiarity with key authors and critical questions in the field.
• Students will develop critical tools to analyze the construction of gender in contemporary society.
• Students will produce a critically-informed written response to the theories of Gender Studies covered in class.

Teaching and Evaluation Methods
The classes will be a mixture of theory, interactive lectures and group discussions. Students will be invited to take an active part while discussing and developing their ideas and interpretations in collaboration with their classmates. This mixture of academic discussion and practical approaches is particularly effective when students have different education and training or have never studied Greek and Latin literature before. All ancient texts used for this course are accompanied by translations.

In this course, we will read and discuss extracts of ancient texts and of opera librettos, in order to analyze the process of reception and of inter-cultural and intermedial adaptation. We will also listen to extracts from the operas that take up and adapt ancient material. After introductory courses on ancient mythology, the history of the opera and the field of Gender Studies, students will be invited to prepare an oral presentation on a mythological figure, comparing the representation of the heroine in an ancient text and its adaptation on the scene, focusing on the critical perspective of Gender Studies.

Evaluation

• 40% Class participation.
• 30% Student presentation in front of their classmates.
• 30% Final essay.

Bibliography

Andò V. 2012. "Ancient Greece and Gender Studies", in: Olmos, P. (ed.), Greek Science in the Long Run, 27-52.

Courtney, B.K. 2016. Opera Transvestism, Disguise Roles, and Women's Sexual agency in Handel's Operas (1727-1741), University of Virginia.

Doherty, L.E. 2001. Gender and the Interpretation of Classical Myth, London.

Gabriel, K.A. 2016. Performing Femininity: Gender in Ancient Greek Myth, New York.

Hadlock, H. 2012, "Opera and Gender Studies", in: Till, N. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies, Cambridge, 257-275.

Lardinois, A. – McClure, L. (ed.). 2001. Making Silence Speak. Women's Voices in Greek Literature and Society, Princeton.

Lateiner, D. – Gold, B.K. – Perkins, J. (ed.). 2013, Roman Literature, Gender and Reception, New York.

Lewis, S. 2011, "Women and Myth", in: Dowden, K. – Livingstone N. (ed.), A Companion to Greek Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 443-458.

McClure, L. 1999. Spoken like a Woman. Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama, Princeton.

Mitchell, K. 2022. Gender, Writing, SpectatorshipsEvenings at the Theatre, Opera, and Silent Screen in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy and Beyond, New York.

More, K.R. (ed.). 2022. The Routledge Companion to the Reception of Ancient Greek and Roman Gender and Sexuality, New York.

Rabinovitz, N.S. – Richlin, A. (ed.). 1993. Feminist theory and the Classics.

Tråvén, M. 2016. "Voicing the Third Gender – The Castrato Voice and the Stigma of Emasculation in Eighteenth-century Society", in: Études Épistémè [Online], 29 [https://doi.org/10.4000/episteme.1220]

Women in Antiquity. An Online Resource for the Study of Women in the Ancient World. [https://womeninantiquity.wordpress.com]

Zeitlin, F. 1996. Playing the Other. Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature, Chicago – London.

Course duration: 40 hours of tuition
Credits equivalence: 6 ECTS

Last updated: July 24, 2026