La queerness che perturba. «Vanessa» di Samuel Barber

The paper proposes a queer interpretation of Samuel Barber’s «Vanessa» (Metropolitan Opera House, 15 January 1958), whose plot focuses on the characters’ burning need to satisfy their urges and on how they each go about doing so. The possibility to interpret the three main characters as allegorical representations of different facets of queerness will be discussed. By focusing on the figures of Anatol (tenor), Vanessa (soprano) and Erika (mezzosoprano), whose actions are driven by desires that are perverse (Anatol), unusual (Vanessa) or deemed immoral (Erika), some aspects of the dramaturgy that contribute to the expression of queerness incarnated by each character will be examined. The paper aims to show that Anatol’s figure can be interpreted as an allegory of the disruptive and disorienting impact of queerness on someone who chose to live in an ivory tower, shielded from any contact with the diversity of the outside world. The two female characters can instead be read as allegories of two possible ways in which a queer individual can react to the disruption caused by the encounter with difference.