Abstract

The relationship between opera and gay subcultures (especially male), lifestyle practices and consumerism has been noted by cultural critics and musicologists - the former in affirmative terms, the latter largely hostile. This article explores this relationship initially through a review of the existing literature before concentrating on the striking affinities in the discursive construction of both cultural forms. In the modern era, both opera and homosexuality have been stigmatized and marginalized in their respective rationalizing ‘scientific’ domains: musicology and sexology. Both have been authoritatively declared unhealthy, both reconstructed out of the distinctive repressions of Victorianism, both subsequently searching for inclusion and legitimacy.