From its earliest existence Opera hasn't felt obliged to be too literal about this matter. Monteverdi cast a tenor as the Old Nurse, Arnalta, in CORONATION OF POPPEA (most of Monteverdi's opera output is now lost - there may have been other examples). His successor Cavalli regularly cast male singers in female roles, especially of the "pantomime dame" kind.
All of Shakespeare's (and Jonson's, and Marlowe's, and Webster's...) female roles were played by males - ethics and laws of the time permitting no other way out to the playwright. And this was when played "South of the River" and outside the jurisdiction of the City Of London, who permitted no theatres at all, even male-only-cast shows. In his last year as Artistic Director before handing over the reins, Mark Rylance directed some experimental productions at the Globe Theatre in London with male-only casts, to prove that it can be done successfully.
In some parts of the world societal values have dictated that female parts are never played by men. In Peking Opera (for some reason the term "Peking Opera" remains current when describing the Beijing tradition) female performers were strictly banned from all public performances (even at travelling fairs and circuses in the countryside) until the 1950s. The
dan (female) roles were always played by men, Mei Lanfang being the most celebrated star. [Mei was happily married, and in fact his son followed him into the profession. As well as being a legendary performer, he became an author and director of new works, using his unique position and popularity to smooth-through reforms to the ultra-conservative norms of the genre. Notably he wrote pieces (prior to the Chinese Revolution) which depicted the invidious position of women in Chinese society, most famously "Drunken Beauty" (a "one-woman" show about the mistress of a Shanghai banker who hits the bottle when she realises he's abandoned her), and even shows which flaunted the ultimate taboo of Peking Opera - and presented the action in modern costume without facial make-up. The Cultural Revolution insisted upon female roles being performed by females, and although it might have been thought they would support Mei's work, in fact banned him and all his work, preferring to limit the repertoire to just eight (!) "model plays" presenting an absurdly revisionist picture of peasant life in China's remote past. However, the pendulum swung back after the 1980s, and men play the
dan roles in around 30% of shows these days. (This should be seen against a background in which Peking Opera's fortunes have dropped catastrophically and the number of troupes has dropped to just three full-time theatres in Beijing). Other regional schools of Chinese opera ("Peking Opera" is by no means the only one) had largely dropped male performers in
dan roles from the 1920s, and these roles are entirely played by women these days. I spent three days with the Lanzhou Opera in June, who willingly shared their professional skills with me, and it was a fascinating experience
I can't imagine Chekhov wanting to see his Three Sisters played by men, however. The piece is, at least in part, a social tract against the repressed role of women in provincial Russian society of the time. (Chekhov was a committed social reformer - his little-known "travel novel", "A Voyage To Sakhalin", is in reality an impassioned plea for prison-system reform). Chekhov himself was the son of a freed serf who'd gone bankrupt, and his youth was spent in the grim and backward town of Taganrog - so he knew the world of his "Three Sisters" from the inside. (In fact he'd only taken-up writing at all to put himself through Medical School, and all his early short stories - published in popular magazines for cash fees - were written under pseudonyms. However, "Towards Dusk" had the deep misfortune - for Chekhov - to win the Pushkin Prize for Literature, obliging the unassuming medical student to step out of the shadows to collect his Award. Chekhov would also have had personal reasons for wanting to have his Three Sisters played by biological females - the role of Masha, who deserts her husband for Vershinin, was written for Ol'ga Knipper, who later became Chekhov's lover and partner. Although she returned to acting after his death - in her arms, at Baden-Baden, where she had taken him in the hope of a cure for tuberculosis - she begged the Management of the Arts Theatre to allow her to move to the role of Natasha instead.
I'm still puzzled why Chekhov's other works haven't been used as opera librettos? Mme Ranevskaya cries-out to be performed by a fading dramatic soprano....
Aside from the issue of casting, is the Eotvos opera any good? I don't know it at all.
Great historical what-ifs... what if Chekhov hadn't died aged 43... what would have become of him had he lived into the Soviet era?
