What was the place of women in eighteenth-century European operatic culture? What was their role in constructing models for women in the eighteenth century? Did opera, and the opportunities for autonomy and social mobility, advance the process of women’s emancipation?

The interdisciplinary project ‘Women, Opera and the Public Stage in Eighteenth-Century Venice’ brings together a research team dedicated to answering these and related questions, rethinking the links between women and European operatic culture in the eighteenth century.

The eighteenth century was a time of change for women across Europe. Women gained greater access to universities and to many different professions, and questions about their education and role in society gained a central place in public discourse. The ‘women question’ was discussed within academies, universities and salons, as well as in novels, magazines and on the stage. Venice, with its history of cultural discourse by and about women, was a hub for these debates and an important international operatic centre. Through its public theatres, these debates reached a wide audience. The Italian opera produced in Venice spread throughout Europe, from Madrid to St. Petersburg, from Dresden to Copenhagen, contributing thus to the formation of cultural identities in Europe in the eighteenth century.

The project is organised in four main areas of inquiry: 1. Women's Roles and Images of Femininity on the Venetian Stage; 2. Celebrity culture and the Performance of Celebrity 3. Audiences, Patrons and Women's Participation in the Opera Business; 4. Performing Eighteenth-Century Operatic Women: A Practice-Based Approach.

Within these related subtopics, we examine the role of operatic women in the construction, representation, and reception of models for women in the eighteenth century. We contextualize the activities of female performers, composers, authors, theatre managers, patrons, and audience members within wider contemporary critical discourses about women’s creativity, education and place in society.

We study how the voice and the body were used to stage gender, analyse celebrity culture and the mediating role of the star singer in the reception of the images of femininity staged in opera at that time using trans-disciplinary methodologies, from more traditional ones within historical and musical analysis, to those developed within the fields of performance, gender and celebrity studies. Thanks to newly identified musical and archival sources, we are reconstructing in greater detail the career, the professional and public profile of a number of prominent female singers of international standing such as Faustina Bordoni, Caterina Gabrielli, Anna Maria Strada, Vittoria Tesi and several others, and acquiring a deeper understanding of the practice of cross-gender casting. We are reconstructing the (largely female) audiences of opera in Venice, and exploring the relationship between opera going practices and the greater visibility acquired by women in eighteenth-century culture and society.

While the project’s focus is on operatic women in eighteenth-century Venice, WoVen aims to go beyond microhistory and the national history of women in Italy to examine female role in the transnational literary and gender history of early modern Europe. By reconstructing careers, activities, singing and acting practices of female singers and their impact on opera production, and by shedding new light on how Italian opera was practiced and how it accompanied the life of women of the past, WoVen will enhance our understanding of Italian opera’s impact on the construction of gender roles and models over the long eighteenth century.