Madame Vestris as Don Giovanni
https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-ed4c-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
In the late Georgian London theater scene the public interest for cross-dressed protagonists sharply increased prompting theater managers to embrace en travesti roles as a sensationalist device to attract audiences. It is arguable that this heightened interest in crossed-dressed representation on the early London musical stages was a bottom-up transfer of cultural information concerning what were considered third and fourth sexes in English society: the “molly” and the “tommy”.
Take for instance The Beggar’s Opera, libretto by John Gay, when the staging of a revival of the operetta in the early 19th century. One theater company seized an opportunity with the current fascination with cross-dressing for the stage by casting many of the roles crossdressed. First produced in 1728, the gritty, satirical operetta explores themes on poverty and corruption through the lens of lower socio-economic classes. The libretto is set to music that would have been familiar to audiences, from a number of sources including broadside ballads, and arranged by Johann Cristoph Pepusch.
A review published in The Morning Post, London, England on June 11, 1829 informs us of a performance of The Beggar’s Opera where many of the principal roles are en travesti. The author writes:
No; we must have higher seasoning forsooth: Pollys and Lucys must be personated by males in petticoats,
and delicate Misses must pour forth the tender sentiments of a Macheath, a Peachum, or a Lockitt in
breeches! If our readers are skeptical with regard to this wonderful change in national feelings and manners,
let them consult the play bill for Saturday next where they will find a new debutante announced as Polly,
the person of their favorite, Mr. J. Reeve, who we have heard has been for some time studying with Velluti.
While men dressing as women weakened the contemporary male archetype, they presented no imminent threat to the cisgendered man’s privilege. The tommy, however, and especially an individual who could pass as biologically male, posed the greatest threat in that if the individual could live as convincingly as a man they would usurp cisgender male privilege at all levels ultimately challenging a cisgender male dominated society as the only possible societal configuration.
One of the most famous performers of the early 19th century in London was stage actor and contralto opera singer Lucia Elizabeth Bartolozzi Vestris (January 3, 1797 - August 8, 1856), or Madame Vestris as she was referred to in myriad publications. For much of her career she filled the britches roles in plays and musical theater. Her breakout role was Mozart’s polarizing antagonist Don Giovanni.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni was first performed in London by a group of opera enthusiasts in 1809 at Hanover Square. The first fully professional mounting of the opera in London took place at the King’s theater in early 1817 followed rather quickly by William Thomas Moncrieff’s burletta Giovanni in London, or The Libertine Tamed at the Olympic Theater in December of the same year with a Miss Brunell in the role of Giovanni. Like John Gay’s opera, Montcrieff’s burletta borrows heavily from touchstones of popular culture taking well-known songs whose cultural associations cast an ironic light on the action.
Not until December 1820 did Madame Vestri play the title role at the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane. Vestri’s meteoric rise to fame came “from the facility with which she could unsex herself , and the confident baldness with which she made her bow.” (unidentified newspaper clipping in the Harvard Theater Collection, Madame Vestris file) She would go on to play another cross-dressed antagonist that would further her fame; Macheath from Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. However, not all critics were in favor of en travesti roles for women.
In the Sunday, December 16, 1821 edition of The Political Examiner this is made evident as the critic writes, “We can never approve of a female wearing breeches; -our objectionsare of a religious, morale, and political nature - we need say no more. ” The reasoning was that britches roles were often characterizing the less desirable archetypes, such as Giovanni and Macheath, found in traditionally male-gendered performative associations, for instance, thieves (highwaymen), libertines (sex-addicts), rapists, and the like.
Save for a scant number of rumors in gossip columns her cross-dressing remained on the stage. However, her off-stage career successes in the male-dominated theater seems to suggest that Vestris, whether knowingly or not, was challenging gender-exclusive professional standards.
In 1830 she became the first long-term female theater manager of the century when she re-opened the Olympic Theater. She is credited with elevating the industry standard in set design as the inventor of the “box set”; a set construction of a room and ceiling with the fourth wall removed allowing the audience to see inside. Madame Vestris owes much of her acting fame to en travesti roles in her early career. She spent most of her career in operatic satires and, as theater manager is considered an influencer in the progression of burletta or burlesque as a theatrical form. Vestris would go on to manage the Lyceum and then Covent Garden Theater until her retirement in 1854.
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