Introducing: Feminist Fatales

Opera: the ‘undoing of women’ (thank you, Catherine Clément!), or vehicle for female empowerment?

As someone who has considered themselves to be a feminist from the day they discovered what it meant, my continually growing love for opera, an art that can undoubtedly be, amongst other things, heavily misogynistic and racist, has, it’s got to be said, caused me some problems. While some operas have given me heroines who inspire me, my own operatic feminist icons (looking at you, Carmen), others demonstrate such crushing misogyny that it makes me question why this is the art I’ve chosen to spend so much time thinking about.

I want to use this blog to help formulate and share my thoughts on topics relating largely to watching and thinking about opera from a feminist perspective, in the form of performance reviews, or just my more general ramblings. Although opera has been used to reinforce stale, offensive stereotypes, it can also be used to effect change. I truly believe that opera is a powerful vehicle for confronting head-on injustices and inequalities that we face today and, on this blog, I hope to be able to celebrate those who do this, and rant about those that don’t…