After having listened to some operas with historical themes I began to
wonder if operas could be a good material for studies of genus-history.
Littature provides much material of course, but I feel in that case that
the problem mainly is there are so much material it is difficult to sort
among it. Then opera is about love (is Boris Godunov the only opera without
a love szene?) and people whatched the mode at the theatre. A cut through
history would give for example:

I listened to Mozarts "Mithradate Re di Ponte", where factual power seems
to be equal to masculine power. Mithradate is emperor, and he is in love
with Apasia, namely his queen. His sons then Farnace and Sifare, are in
love with Apasia as well and fight for the power, therefore these are sung
by sopranos? It is also an interesting example of an opera from point of
the view of history in general, as history was treated rather poetic, like
in Ancient time. It is a lovely opera anyway, although it comes out better
live then on record. There was a very good production featuring Elisabeth
Magnusson as Sifare for example.

Mozart was a psycholog and took interest in relations, still I always
thought his male characters are much more sharper painted then the feminie
characters. I would even wish, when listening to his operas that the male
characters should be sung by not the top artists, then in a recording with
a dramatic singer, like Peter Mattei in the main role in "Don Giovanni" in
Daniel Hardings recording, the impression of the person gallery is very
unbalanced. Don Giovanni himself is of course the main character, and in
this production I felt that so dynamic sung there were only Peter Mattei
(and also, but not exactly so impressive Gilles Cachemaille as Leporello),
the women were reduced to nothing it seemed. (For reference: The recording
in question was with Mahler Chamber Orchestra of Aix-en-Provence/Harding -
Virgin Classics 5454252 [3CD]).

That can be compared with Madama Butterfly from 1904, where the main
character is not Pinkerton himself after, if masculinity should be defined
after toughness.

And then we have Wagner.

Mats Norrman