Principal supervisor: Prof. Dr Anna Langenbruch | Co-supervisor: Prof. Dr Susanne Rode-Breymann (Nuremberg University of Music)

The aim of this thesis is to examine queer biographies on the contemporary opera stage. The aim is to explore the historiographical potential inherent in the genre for narrating the history of non-normative gender. To this end, insights from two fields of research are brought together: biography research informed by queer theory on the one hand, and research into musical theatre as a performative-historiographical genre on the other. In doing so, this thesis aims to contribute both (1) to situating queer-biographical material within the phenomenon of contemporary biographical operas and (2) to the further application of reflections on music-historical theatre as a whole.

The central theoretical premise of my work lies in the understanding of queer-biographical opera as a ‘historiographical and, at the same time, musical genre’ (Langenbruch 2018, p. 75; 2021, p. 21), which, amongst other things, builds on ideas from the ‘narrative turn’ (White 1973) in historical studies. The application of historical-theoretical reflection to the context of the ‘stage’ – and thus the question of the intermedial possibilities for constructing or modes of representing history – must be situated within a broader, interdisciplinary field of research. For musicology, Anna Langenbruch has coined the neologism ‘music history theatre’. This term refers to “stage events that address music history by combining a historical narrative with musical and dramatic-scenic elements […], a form of historiography in the medium of music.” (2021, p. 21) The fact that these considerations can also be extended to other operatic subjects and, for example, applied fruitfully to the exploration of queer biographies and gender history on stage will be illustrated using selected contemporary operas. For even if ‘music history’ is not a central theme, there are nonetheless implicit narrative interconnections here with, amongst other things, music-historical topoi and compositional styles.

Building on Langebruch’s theoretical reflections on historiographical music theatre, this thesis explores the question of how queer biographies, as well as representations of gender and music history, are constructed and interwoven in contemporary operatic works at the compositional, staging, performative and reception-aesthetic levels, and how they are interwoven with one another. Two case studies will form the centre of this investigation:

*Alexina B.* is a three-act opera created in close collaboration between the composer Raquel García-Tomás, the librettist Irène Gayraud and the director Marta Pazos during the Covid-19 pandemic. Funded by a Leonardo grant from the BBVA Foundation, the opera had its world premiere in March 2023 at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. The French-language libretto is based on the memoirs of Adélaïde Herculine Barbin (1838–1868), later Abel Barbin, an intersex person who was assigned female at birth. The opera tells Barbin’s story through a series of flashbacks. In doing so, she emerges from this period of history not merely as a victim of traumatic life circumstances, but also as an empowered individual.

Lili Elbe is the first full-length opera about a person with experience of transitioning, composed specifically for a singer with the same experience to take on the title role. The opera was created in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic as a commissioned work by Konzert und Theater St. Gallen for the composer Tobias Picker. In collaboration with Aryeh Lev Stollman (libretto), Krystian Lada (director) and Lucia Lucas (singer and dramaturg for the authors), the opera premiered at the opening of the season in October 2023. The libretto is based on the life story of Lili Ilse Elvenes (1882–1931), one of the first people to undergo gender-affirming surgery. The opera focuses on the final years of Elvenes’ life and thus on the various phases of her transition process. The myth of Orpheus serves as a central dramaturgical element, interwoven with the biographical narrative through music, text and staging, thereby emphasising the work’s classification as an ‘artist’s opera’.

What both opera productions have in common is that, with regard to queer gender, they explore aspects of perspectivity and are characterised by an oscillation between the narrated (historical) and the narrating (contemporary) moments. Much like Woolf in her fictional, meta-historical biography *Orlando*, the opera’s protagonists explore the relationship between biography, (musical) historiography and fictionality in various ways. To demonstrate how queer biographies are constructed and performatively brought to life on the contemporary opera stage, I adopt a multi-perspective, multi-level approach in my analysis of the case studies, drawing on a heterogeneous, performance-related source material comprising the score, libretto, stage photos, programme, performance recording, minutes of recollections, press reviews and qualitative interviews I conducted myself with key participants. Consequently, in my analyses I employ a combination of hermeneutic source criticism and qualitative methodology. Particular attention will be paid, amongst other things, to (1) aspects of (double) temporalisation and the performative-musical means employed in this context, (2) the role of sounds and (pre-existing) music and their biography-constructing effect, and (3) the compositional and performative shaping of the voice and body of the subjects of the biographies, particularly against the backdrop of the gendered practice of operatic vocal registers and the construction of vocal genders.