A lister on another moderated list (on Lieder) to which I subscribe raised
a question I've been thinking about recently.  Since I'd be interested in
the thoughts of many of you on the MCM list, I thought I'd re-post my
message to the lieder list, just to set the discussion context.

It is interesting to me that in certain song cycles, e.g., "Les Nuits
d'Ete" by Berlioz, which MCML has recently discussed, there is much that
is clearly gender-specific, especially the final song, 'L'Ile inconnu," yet
the Berlioz is frequently recorded by female singers and is considered part
of their standard repertoire.  (One of the critical hallmarks, to me, of a
good performance of that cycle is whether the singer is able to find the
right tone color for each moment in the shifting palette the poetry and
orchestration demand.  For example, I was always troubled by Elly Ameling's
recording of the Berlioz by moments like this:  she sang that last song,
whose character is clearly a man of the sea and man-of-the-world, in the
typically femme voice that she used for the cycle as a whole, and then
interjected the virginal girl-character's two sweet lines in the tones
of a longshoreman.

Here's my lieder post on this question (with apologies to those also on
that list who are getting this again):

   I'm glad this discussion is opening up.  Coincidentally, I was just
   thinking the other evening about the wonderful Vaughan Williams "Songs
   of Travel," a cycle which I sang in its entirety (I'm a soprano) in
   my first-ever public recital in the '80s.  Generally, the cycle is
   done in its entirety by a man, or occasionally shared by a male and
   a female singer.  But my own introduction to these songs was hearing
   Janet Baker sing two of them, "Let Beauty Awake," and "The Infinite
   Shining Heavens," as encores at a Carnegie Hall program.  I was so
   enchanted that I went out and bought the music to the cycle, and
   found the whole thing to be so compelling that I decided to ignore
   any question of gender tradition.  It's a bit like an English
   "Winterreise," in a way, though lighter in tone, and though much of
   it is in a male poetic voice (texts are by Robt.  Louis Stevenson),
   speaks to the human experience as much as a man's experience.  (A
   mezzo friend of mine, Sandra Goodman, has been known to do the whole
   Winterreise, and I recall her performance of it a number of years
   ago to have been very affecting.) At that little debut concert, Jack
   Diether (the late Mahler scholar and an eloquent music critic for
   the Chelsea-Clinton News/Westsider weekly papers in Manhattan),
   thought the Songs of Travel choice worked, and particularly liked
   the performance of "The Vagabond," one of the most "male" of the
   songs, writing something like, "here, at any rate, is a girl to hit
   the open road with." So I suppose my early exposure to this cycle,
   and to the recital literature in general, was colored by a sense of
   permission Re:  gender choices in song.

   After all, when we attend a lieder recital we are suspending disbelief
   in any case:  allowing the singer, like a storyteller, to create a
   world for us in partnership with our own imaginative capacity.  So
   while a "Winterreise" by a woman or a "Wesendonck" cycle by a man is
   a little like Garbo playing Hamlet, the question in my mind as a
   listener/watcher is, does Garbo convey the essence of Hamlet in a
   convincing way, and perhaps offer new insights?

   How deeply does the interpreter immerse him/herself in the reality
   of the song-world, how believable does the artist make the portrayal
   on a level that transcends gender, age (we've all experienced performers
   who can make us believe they are decades older or younger than their
   chronological age when a song or a role calls for that), and other
   limitations of the performer's physical body? (How much time do we
   spend thinking about Quasthof's arms when we're listening to him
   sing?) More important to me is, is the voice suited to the repertoire
   in more subtle ways than voice part or gender: if a man sings a
   "woman's" song, does he have the right vocal colors and textures
   available for it, and vice versa?  There's also my own belief that
   we're all made up of some proportion of animus and anima that, to a
   greater or lesser degree, enables us to play both masculine and and
   feminine "roles" in different situations in our lives, depending on
   what the situation calls out of us.

   Then beyond the ideal world of aesthetics, there's "What the Public
   Will Buy," literally and figuratively.  To what degree would one's
   acceptance of an artist doing what we might call Gender Transcendant
   concert programming be influenced by whether the artist was an
   already-acknowledged Great One (thereby having a certain license to
   experiment), or an obscure upstart who might or might not be expected
   to "know better?    Would a record buyer only try a non-traditional
   recording of a standard piece if it was done by a singer with whose
   work they were already familiar, or might curiosity pique their
   interest? What recordings or memorable concerts have listers encountered
   in the Gender Transcendent realm?

Over to all of you MCML's,

Danielle W.
 http://www.HVmusic.com/artists/danielle