Universi di genere non canonici da Georges Bizet a Nino Rota

Georges Bizet’s «Les pêcheurs de perles» (1863) and Nino Rota’s «La visita meravigliosa» (1970) stand out in the operatic output of the last two centuries for the peculiarity with which the female figure is featured within the triangle of relationships with the other two co-protagonists. The latter, unlike the common conventions in Romantic opera, are strongly attached to each other; conversely, the woman to whom one or both are in love remains in the background. This paper aims to correlate the representation of the female universe as a marginal world in the two works with the focus on the implicitly queer relationship of the dramaturgy between the other two characters. The reading of Bizet’s and Rota’s works shows how musical theatre can offer an author an effective space for telling gender differences which are tabooed in the real world.