Women in Opera: Not Yet Defeated

Is it surprising that three recent publications dealing with women in opera prominently refer to a book from 1979? Maybe not when this book is Catherine Cl & eacute;ment's L'op & eacute;ra ou la d & eacute;faite des femmes (Opera, or the Undoing of Women, English translation by Betsy Wing, 1988). Cl & eacute;ment's reading of women characters in the standard operatic repertoire from Mozart to Puccini quickly became a 'classic' within feminist opera studies and influenced much of the scholarly debate in the 1980s and 1990s. The monographs by Marcie Ray, Kimberly White and Monica A. Hershberger, all presenting results from their doctoral research and beyond, give revealing insights into where we stand today when dealing with women in opera. Several thematic and methodological approaches in all three books provide indications of the current issues of debate.