About the Book En Travesti addresses the ways in which opera empowers women by challenging conventional gender hierarchies. Terry Castle, Helene Cixous, Lowell Gallagher and Elizabeth Wood are among the contributors. Includes 20 musical examples. Book Synopsis Since the release of Wayne Koestenbaums book, The Queens Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, gender studies has begun to take an active interest in music. Opera, long viewed as strictly an establishment tradition, has in particular been given a second look by gender theorists. Can opera - an antiquated, Eurocentric bastion of high culture - in fact be subverting patriarchal authority in some fundamental way? Review Quotes Celebrates opera as a medium that empowers female desire and undermines the heterosexist hierarchies its plots would seem to perpetuate. The impressive group of authors in this collection-literary critics, musicologists, philosophers, reexamine not only operas ranging from Monteverdi to Gertrude Stein but also the complex relationships between divas and their female fans. A stunning contribution to cultural studies, feminism, and music criticism. About the Author Patricia Juliana Smith is the author of Lesbian Panic (Columbia). Corinne E. Blackmer teaches at Southern Connecticut State University.