‘To sing with a female voice and act with a male persona …’

Alice Coote’s thoughtful, irreverent, mind-and-body bending dissertation this week on performing out of your given gender is essential reading for everyone who sings mezzo, has dealings with mezzos, or is thinking of asking one out on a date.

It requires maximum suspension of certainties. If you haven’t read it already, do so here.

Teaser text:

And at the end of the day at least I can take my costume off and return to the certainty of myself and my own gender… Or can I? And which part of myself am I returning to? There have, I confess, been several occasions over the years when come tea break I have walked out of the rehearsal room straight into the men’s toilets. For the record I have immediately scuttled out blushing and shocked into reality when I am confronted by the apparatus on the walls. But it’s confusing …