#MeToo and Opera

#MeToo and Opera

Since Harvey Weinstein’s exposé in 2017, the #MeToo movement has become a major social force that condemned and exposed sexual harassment and abuse of women by men in positions of power. As a college professor who teaches opera, where many iconic plots are based on sexual harassment and abuse of women by men in positions of power: Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto, Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro, La Boheme, to name just a few – I am faced with a growing responsibility of addressing this issue.

How then do I approach teaching the standard opera repertoire to my young college students? It seems that glossing over the misogyny and female abuse in operatic works is no longer an option. Neither is it feasible to omit the classic repertoire, where treatment of women offends some of the modern sensibilities. The great power, genius and educational benefit of those works cannot be argued.

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Briggs, M. (2019, November 22). #MeToo and Opera. CS Music. https://www.csmusic.net/content/articles/metoo-and-opera/