travesty role Reference library
Adrienne Scullion
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
... role ( trouser role ) Male character written for the female voice and sung by a female performer: for example, Siebel in Gounod's Faust ( 1859 ), Prince Orlofsky in Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus ( 1874 ), Nicklaus in Offenbach 's Tales of Hoffmann ( 1881 ), Octavian in Richard Strauss 's Der Rosenkavalier ( 1911 ), and the Composer in his Ariadne on Naxos ( 1916 ). The term does not, strictly speaking, apply to those roles originally written for castrati performers that are now performed by women, nor to the cross-dressing, ...
travesty role
Macbeth Reference library
Michael Dobson, Will Sharpe, Anthony Davies, and Will Sharpe
The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2 ed.)
...whom the play exerted a palpable influence) to Welles , Polanski , and Kurosawa . In the modern theatre alone, the play’s offshoots range from the American political skit Macbird (an attack on President Johnson , 1965 , one of a long line of Macbeth burlesques and travesties) to Heiner Müller ’s radical adaptation Macbeth nach Shakespeare ( 1972 ) and Ionesco’s Macbett ( 1972 ). Quite apart from anything else, the play has influenced all subsequent notions of ghosts and witches . The force with which Macbeth depicts terror and the...
35 The Slavonic Book in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus Reference library
Christine Thomas
The Oxford Companion to the Book
...the 1720s banning the publication of anything apart from liturgical texts identical to those printed in Moscow and St Petersburg limited the previously distinctive nature of Ukrainian printing. The first work of literature in modern Ukrainian, Ivan Kotliarevs’kyi’s burlesque travesty of Virgil’s Aeneid (in which the Trojan heroes become Cossacks expelled from their homelands by the Russian government), circulated in MS and was eventually published in St Petersburg in 1798 . Publications in Ukrainian, or even in the Ukrainian recension of Church Slavonic,...
Travesty
travesty Quick reference
Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins (3 ed.)
...travesty [M17th] Both travesty and transvestite [E20th] go back to Latin trans ‘across’ and vestire ‘to clothe’, and in the theatre a travesty role is still one designed to be played by a cross-dressing performer. The usual modern sense, ‘a false or absurd representation of something’, developed from the word’s application to literary parodies and burlesques. Academic interest in sexuality developed in Germany and Austria in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the immediate source of transvestite was German Transvestit . See also invest...
Wood, John Reference library
The Companion to Theatre and Performance
...roles. He was also closely associated with the work of *Stoppard : in 1974 he won awards in London and New York for his performance as Carr, the minor diplomat in Travesties . He played in Stoppard's version of *Schnitzler 's Undiscovered Country at the *National Theatre ( 1979 ), where he also appeared in The Provok'd Wife ( 1980 ) and Richard III ( 1992 ). Later appearances at the RSC included Prospero in The Tempest , Solness in The Master Builder , Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner (all 1989 ), and the title role in ...
Bernard, Sam Reference library
The Oxford Companion to American Theatre (3 ed.)
...travesties, such as The Geezer ( 1896 ), The Glad Hand ( 1897 ), and Pousse Cafe ( 1897 ). On leaving Weber and Fields, he assumed his first starring role as Hermann Engel, the central figure in The Marquis of Michigan ( 1898 ). Similar roles followed in A Dangerous Maid ( 1898 ), The Man in the Moon ( 1899 ), The Casino Girl ( 1900 ), and The Belle of Bohemia ( 1900 ). Bernard scored a major success as Mr. Hoggenheimer in The Girl from Kay's ( 1903 ) and reprised the role in The Rich Mr. Hoggenheimer ( 1906 ). More dialect roles came...
Mentzer, Susanne Reference library
Andrew Clark
The Grove Book of Opera Singers (2 ed.)
...Covent Garden in 1985 and has since appeared with all the leading US companies, including the Metropolitan Opera, where she made her début as Cherubino in 1989 , and Los Angeles Opera, where her début role was Octavian ( 1994 ). Mentzer has been particularly successful in the Strauss and Mozart travesty roles, but is also an accomplished Zerlina (the role of her La Scala début in 1987 ), Dorabella, Adalgisa, Giovanna Seymour ( Anna Bolena ), Marguerite ( La damnation de Faust ), Romeo ( I Capuletti e i Montecchi ), Mélisande, which she first sang at the...
Playboy of the Western World, The Reference library
The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature
...hearts of the local women by boasting that he has killed his father. His prowess at the local sports confirms him in the role of hero and as fitting mate for Pegeen Mike. When old Mahon appears, they turn upon their hero despite his offer to ‘slay his da’ a second time. Escaping from their clutches, he tames his father, and the two leave the stage disdainful of the gullible Mayo peasants. The play was condemned by nationalists as a travesty of western Irish life, and treated as a stage-Irish libel evoking a peasantry of alcoholics and fantasists rather than a...
Wood, John (1930–2011) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to American Theatre (3 ed.)
...British performer, who brought a dark shadow of menace to his many comic roles, made only sporadic appearances on Broadway but usually earned raves. He was born in Derbyshire, educated at Oxford, and appeared with the Old Vic and on the West End before making his New York debut playing the confused pawn Guildenstern in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead ( 1967 ). On subsequent visits Wood also shone as Sherlock Holmes ( 1974 ), the senile civil servant Henry Carr in Travesties ( 1975 ), the con man Tartuffe ( 1977 ), the scheming mystery writer...
Colville, Samuel (1825–86) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to American Theatre (3 ed.)
...farce‐comedies, those primitive precursors of musical comedy. Similarly the Henderson and Colville Opera Company and, more importantly, the Colville Opera Company crossed the country offering early operettas. He also ran the Colville Burlesque Opera Company, which presented travesties of popular operettas and plays. Colville is credited with giving important starts to Julia Mathews and Alice Oates , two prominent musical performers of the...
Brambilla, Marietta Reference library
The Grove Book of Opera Singers (2 ed.)
...London, as Arsace in Gioachino Rossini's Semiramide . During the season she sang two more travesty roles, Adriano ( Giacomo Meyer beer's Il crociato ) and Romeo ( Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli's Romeo e Giulietta ), becoming a specialist in such parts. She sang Paolo at the first performance of Generali's Francesca di Rimini in 1828 at La Fenice. At La Scala ( 1838 ) she sang Cherubino and Arsace ( Semiramide ). Gaetano Donizetti composed two trouser roles for her, Maffio Orsini in Lucrezia Borgia , first given at La Scala in 1833 , and Pierotto...
Cuénod, Hugues Reference library
Alan Blyth
The Grove Book of Opera Singers (2 ed.)
...making his stage début at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris in 1928 . He appeared in many character roles in the main opera houses. He created the role of Sellem in Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress ( 1951 , Venice) and sang the Astrologer in The Golden Cockerel ( 1954 , Covent Garden). He made his Glyndebourne début in 1954 as Sellem, going on to sing over 470 performances there, his roles including Don Basilio, the travesty parts of Erice and Linfea in Cavalli's L’Ormindo and La Calisto , Triquet ( Yevgeny Onegin ) and the Cock (...
Quinton, Everett Reference library
Mark Fearnow
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
...himself as a ‘male actress’, joined New York 's Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1976 and performed a series of ever larger roles in the company's camp vehicles and travesties ( see female impersonation ). With the death of Charles Ludlam —the Ridiculous's founder, chief playwright, and artistic director , as well as Quinton's companion—in 1987 , Quinton became artistic director. He took on a number of Ludlam's trademark roles, such as Marguerite Gautier in Ludlam's version of Camille , and soon emerged as a playwright, writing and performing a ...
Wood, John Reference library
Adrienne Scullion
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
...cycle of Shakespeare productions using First Folio texts . At the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1971 his career developed with a series of diverse roles. He was also closely associated with the work of Tom Stoppard : in 1974 he won an Evening Standard best actor award and in 1976 the Tony for his performance as Carr , the put-upon minor diplomat and Foreign Office official in Travesties . He played in Stoppard's version of Schnitzler 's Undiscovered Country at the National Theatre ( 1979 ), where he also appeared in The Provok'd Wife ...
Travesty Reference library
The International Encyclopedia of Dance
...audiences were never again willing to accept the substitution of women in men's roles. Travesty survived into the twentieth century as a comedic tradition in vaudeville, in music halls, in the principal boys and dame comedians of English pantomime, and in the female impersonators of drag shows. (The term drag originated in the 1800s, derived from the dragging trains of women's dresses.) In contemporary ballet, travesty roles for women are rare, with the exception of those roles that call for a temporary disguise that is not intended to deceive the audience...
Sénéchal, Michel Reference library
Elizabeth Forbes and Alan Blyth
The Grove Book of Opera Singers (2 ed.)
...Paris Opéra and Opéra-Comique, as well as other French theatres, he sang lyric roles such as Ferrando, Don Ottavio, Tamino, Almaviva, Count Ory, Paolino ( Il matrimonio segreto ), Hylas ( Les Troyens ), Georges Brown ( La dame blanche ) and also many character roles. In 1956 he sang Jean-Philippe Rameau's Platée at Aix-en-Provence, scoring a triumph in the travesty role of an elderly nymph, which he repeated at Amsterdam, Brussels and the Opéra-Comique ( 1977 ). Other roles in this category included Erice ( Ormindo ), Monsieur Triquet, Scaramuccio (...
Nantier-Didiée, Constance Reference library
Philip Robinson
The Grove Book of Opera Singers (2 ed.)
...to appear until 1864 . Giacomo Meyerbeer and Gounod wrote her additional music for productions there of Dinorah ( 1859 ) and Faust ( 1863 ). She was the first Preziosilla in La forza del destino ( 1862 , St Petersburg), and had a wide repertory of comic, dramatic and travesty roles. H. F. Chorley : Thirty Years’ Musical Recollections , London, 1862/ R , abridged 2/1926/ R by E. Newman Philip...
Berbié, Jane Reference library
André Tubeuf and Elizabeth Forbes
The Grove Book of Opera Singers (2 ed.)
...), Grandmother Buryjovka, Auntie ( Peter Grimes ) and Marcellina (notably in the 1973 Figaro inaugurating Rolf Liebermann's administration). With a repertory ranging from Claudio Monteverdi to the 20th century, she is particularly delightful on stage in travesty, ingénue or soubrette roles. She sang Maffio Orsini in the Carnegie Hall concert performance of Lucrezia Borgia in which Caballé made her American début ( 1965 ). She first appeared at Glyndebourne in 1967 (as Mirinda in L’Ormindo ), returning as Despina ( 1969 , 1971 , 1984 ); as...
