#sesto

Day 2643, 18 September 2025

I've read many times that until the 20th century, girls typically got their first period around age 16.

Just now it dawned on me: did this difference also affect how late a boy's voice usually changed?

I was just thinking of certain teenage boy characters in opera, who are "pants roles" or "trouser roles" (sung by women) despite presumably being old enough to have changed voices.

For example, the role of Sesto in Handel's Giulio Cesare, who was historically 19 when the events of the opera take place.

Or Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, who presumably has an unchanged voice in-universe since the other characters repeatedly disguise him as a girl, yet who is old enough to be sent into the army and to be suspected of sleeping with the Countess.

Or Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, who is explicitly 17, yet masquerades as a girl even more successfully than Cherubino.

FTGU March. At the first time I think it must be a renovation of 10-year-project, but ... at the end it became a villa for another of my character, haha. Love this Villa because that stairs leveling. 

Elīna Garanča as Sesto in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito

Men’s Classic Cars - Porsche 911