“There are certain conventions in opera about who does what and you can tell from voice types,” Dr. Naomi André says at the start of “Tessitura,” noting that you’re more likely to fall in love on stage if you’re an alto or a soprano or play the villain if you happen to be a bass. Dr. Andre has found a surprisingly fertile area of study for gender studies in the classical artform when prepubescent boys were once cast as women because of their high voices – and at a time when the consequences were less well-known, castrated to preserve them – and women were cast as young boys. Yet like most mainstream productions in various mediums, having much more of an imagination when it comes to casting mostly ends there and in co-directors Lydia Cornett and Brit Fryer’s resplendent consideration of how the classical art is being brought into contemporary times, three trans singers demonstrate how much richer the form can be when everyone can be a part of it.
Arranged like an opera complete with an entr’acte, “Tessitura” may illuminate the doors that have been closed to trans performers, but it also shows how opera allowed them to see a place for themselves in the world as the soprano Breanna Sinclairé recalls how the theater became a refuge from an abusive domestic situation and a production of “Madame Butterfly” sent her mind racing with possibilities as someone whose voice mysteriously never changed during puberty. She is joined by Lucas Bouk, a former mezzo soprano who retrained his voice to become a baritone following his transition, and Katherine Goforth, who used to consider herself a tenor and will occasionally sing lower octaves should the role call for it, but has strived for parts that will honor who she is now. Their voices are all powerful on a purely technical level, but somehow even more resonant upon learning their personal journeys to the stage and Cornett and Fryer follow them into unusually intimate spaces, ranging from Sinclairé’s visit to an ear, nose and throat that offers her a look at her own vocal chords to swimming alongside Bouk at the beach, to find how they gained the confidence in their own bodies to imagine themselves for a greater variety of roles in their careers.
After first collaborating on the delightful 2021 short “Bug Farm” as a director and producer, respectively, Cornett and Fryer clearly make for a dynamic directing duo, especially when the former once trained as a classical musician, and the 18-minute short feels as sumptuous as the best examples of the artform at its center. With the film making its regional premiere at Blackstar in Philadelphia this week where it will also be available virtually to anyone anywhere in the 48 hours after its premiere on August 1st, the filmmakers generously took the time to talk about how they landed on such a fascinating subject, finding the three stars of the film and creating a vibrant modern context to unpack centuries’ worth of history.
How did this come about?
Lydia Cornett: A lot of my past work has been looking at structures of rigidity, and coming from this classical music background, I was interested in this very contradictory way that gender and gender fluidity was expressed in opera history. On the one hand, it is touted as this very queer and gender-fluid artform, but then also is known as this very conservative, strict and elitist art form. I was talking with Brit about this idea and really wanting to collaborate on something that was looking at this idea of how voice and character and gender in opera are entangled in this very messy way.
Brit Fryer: When Lydia started talking to me about this idea, something that was really interesting [to me] was her background is in classical music. Her parents are in the opera world or classical music world, and I’m an outsider to opera completely — Lydia took me to my first opera while we were in very, very early development and I had no idea what to expect. But I’m really interested in sites of tension, specifically in trans narratives and when I think about other films I’ve made, it’s always about these cruxes in terms of where we actually have to sit and think about gender or queerness and how people do or do not fit in these categories we’ve created. So I just thought that even though I knew so little about opera, I [thought], “Wow, there are trans people who so clearly want to be in this art form and have to contend with these things daily. What a beautiful site of tension.” And what we learned over the course of the production was the different ways in which they contend. A lot of them have different relationships to opera as an industry or as an art form because of the specific ways that their gender shows up in that space. So it just felt like something that was really sticky and [I thought] let’s figure out what if we bring singers into this conversation, what might they want to share about sitting in the sticky stuff.
How did you end up with the three people you have at the center of this?
Lydia Cornett: We started out with a different idea for an ensemble cast that was more looking at these ideas of voice and gender and character and maybe people connected to opera who weren’t necessarily singers who could provide a perspective on each of those categories. But then there was so much to look at within the history of opera when we talked to the musicologist in the film, Dr. Naomi André and we realized there were these myriad experiences within the singers’ lives. That ranged from the type of repertoire they were interested in singing and characters they were interested in [playing] to the way that they were contending with how they wanted to sing and what made them feel safe in an operatic context.
And Brit has this film called “The Script,” which is about the relationship between trans folks and medical communities and one thing [Brit] was really interested in looking at was this hierarchy of medical language and how that exists as this thing we put on a pedestal. With this film around vocal types and vocal range, that classification of the voice seems like something uncontested, but it actually is encapsulating this interplay of gender constructs and roles that you sing on stage and obviously societal expectations and audience expectations. So that was another thing that we felt like we could find in the lives of these singers.
Brit Fryer: And Lydia went to Baltimore School of the Arts with Breanna, which is a great connection, and then we reached out to a lot of different singers [asking], “Oh, what do you have going on during those dates?”
Lydia Cornett: I do think that finding the subsequent singers was really helped by having Breanna on board [from the start]. And the ensemble came together through their knowledge of one another. They actually didn’t meet for the first time until a recent film festival in Colorado, which was really special. But it’s a small community and creating that community within the film really helped find the right people.
Brit Fryer: They’re all from different cities and a lot of them knew of each other, but it’s very rare that they would all get the chance to ever perform together organically.
What was the meeting like in Colorado?
Lydia Cornett: It was one of the most amazing screening experiences we had, at Telluride Mountain Film, where the festival actually brought out all of the singers to perform. [The singers] would perform after our shorts block, but also throughout the festival, so they got to just be part of the life of the festival, but more importantly, meet one another and have this retreat with each other. It was a lot of late night bonding and conversations about their life in this industry, [which] I think was really, really special, as well as this performance opportunity.
It was interesting that you mentioned that Brit didn’t know much about opera coming in while Lydia was steeped in it – it comes through in the film where it seems like it could play to both audiences without ever being condescending or too effete. What’s it like to put that together structural?
Brit Fryer: Yeah, I had heard of Castrati singers — mostly like that SNL sketch is what I’m thinking about. But Lydia always came in saying there was a very clear history that needed to be known to set this context and I didn’t realize how important that thread would be. I imagined that the film could sit with just these singers, but when we got into conversations with the singers about the history, it felt so necessary because the way they were complicating the history and untangling it, we [realized], “Oh, we have to go back to the beginning.” In terms who we were thinking would see the film, we hope that we can bring opera people into this world of nonfiction filmmaking and also do the opposite where people are curious about opera after this because there are so many different varieties.
Lydia Cornett: Yeah, we came in knowing there’s several hundred years of historical instances of gender fluidity and gender bending on stage wrapped up with a lot of really fraught and terrible situations, especially with something like the Castrati singers. I remember learning a lot from Brit and that was a really nuanced conversation where we were like how do we talk about this history without first of all valorizing this life-threatening practice in any way, but also not comparing it directly to the lives of our main participants in the films, which are so different and existing under such different circumstances and constructs. I think we both learned a lot from each other and then also Brit was always thinking about structuring it in the style of an opera, which I think really was successful in the end. It helps you keep all of these people clear in your mind [in terms of] what’s going on and where are we.
Brit Fryer: That came with a lot of like trial and error. We did try a version where the characters were interweaved [while we were] figuring out what is the best way that people can understand this? And we were very lucky that Lydia and I both represented the audience we were hoping to reach.
Was there anything that changed your ideas of what this was or took it in a direction you didn’t expect?
Brit Fryer: I wasn’t there the day we shot Breanna’s visit to the doctor where the camera goes down the throat, so when I saw the footage, I was like, “What is this?!?” And it opened up the door for me that there could be a lot of levity and lightness and humor in the film in these ways that were like interesting and compelling and still sticky. That scene, for me, gives us what the tone is. It’s serious and it’s dramatic and it’s playful, just like opera in a lot of ways, so that was definitely a turning point for me seeing that scene in the edit. And this is a real testament to Lydia and the way that Lydia makes films, which just involves duration with people. You have to spend time with people to really unearth these things that they might be doing anyway that really shine a light to their stories. It’s very different from the more hybrid docs that I make, so that was very new for me.
For example, after we did Lucas’s interview, we got this idea from this line Lucas had, “I could return to sports and feel the way I felt on stage off stage and be in my body in this way,” and it came up naturally that Lucas was a distant swimmer, so we were like, “Let’s go to the beach” [to film with Lucas]. So that really just comes from spending time with participants and then going on a little break and then coming back, being clear with each of the singers of what we were interested in from their stories which also made them think about the things they were doing in their lives that might be useful or might add to what they were saying in their interviews.
Lydia Cornett: Yeah, it was also this way of getting outside of the niche world of opera singing If you’re coming into this film without any knowledge and you’re seeing all the costumes and you don’t like the music, we still wanted to communicate that opera singers are also dealing with other things. There’s so can so many connections between opera singing and something like the respiratory system that you need to think about. If you’re just going to the doctor because you’re exerting so much of your voice, you need to make sure you’re doing it healthily so these scenes [such as Breanna visiting the doctor] I was hoping, in addition to providing more depth to each of the singers, could make something as obscure as opera singing actually more visible in everyday life.
What’s it been like taking the film out on the road?
Lydia Cornett: Mountain Film was a really special one because of the singers [being there] and our first two festivals were at True/False and Big Sky, and those are two amazing but also such different festivals and at every festival, it’s been really cool to see how the region intersects with this niche topic. True/False is an amazing community of documentary lovers, and then with Big Sky, there’s a lot of doc lovers, but there’s also people who are very invested in the outdoors and nature photography, so talking about the athleticism and physicality of opera in a place like that was interesting and to see opera singing put on that comparative platform. We’re really psyched to be back at Blackstar.
Brit Fryer: We’re just excited to like continue to try to bring the film to where the singers are or will be, because we think that they really make the film what it is, and we want them to be celebrated. So fingers crossed for more festivals in the Seattle area where Katherine is, in San Francisco, and here in New York.
“Tessitura” will screen at the Blackstar Film Festival on August 1st at 11 am at the Wilma Theater and be available to stream on the Blackstar virtual platform for 48 hours starting at 1:30 pm EST on August 1st.