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Why were women barred from singing on the Roman opera stage?

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Members of the Dnepropetrovsk State Opera and Ballet Theatre perform Il Trovatore, with a woman in tattered costume singing dramatically at center stage and other actors in period dress. — opera Performance of Giuseppe Verdi's *Il trovatore*, 2011.

In Rome, women were barred from performing on the opera stage due to local social and ecclesiastical restrictions that prohibited them from appearing in public theatrical performances.1

Because of this ban, Roman opera productions relied on all-male casts to fill all roles, including those written for female characters. To achieve the high vocal ranges required for these parts, composers and producers utilized castrati—male singers who had undergone castration before puberty to preserve their high-pitched voices. This practice became a defining feature of the Roman operatic tradition during the 17th century, as seen in works like Sant’ Alessio (1632).12

While women were excluded from the Roman stage, they were not barred from all musical performance; for example, professional female vocal ensembles known as the concerto delle donne flourished in other Italian cities like Ferrara, Mantua, and Florence during the late 16th and early 17th centuries.3