Rachel burst through the curtain surrounding her bedroom, dressed in a black cocktail dress but barefoot and with no makeup on. “Kurt! I need you to be my date tonight.”

Kurt looked up from the couch, where he’d been watching a movie. “Need I remind you that I’m gay and you have a boyfriend?”

“Ha, ha, hilarious,” she said dryly, rolling her eyes. “Brody was going to take me to the opera tonight but he just texted me to say he has the flu and can’t go, and I want to see it so bad. I’ve never been to an opera before, and it’s so high class and New York, I can’t miss it. So you have to be my date. He said we could pick up the tickets at will call.”

“Hmm, that does sound like fun,” Kurt said. “I’ve never been to the opera, either. Okay, fine. I’ll go get dressed. What opera is it, anyway?”

“Le Nozze di Figaro,” Rachel said in her best Italian accent.

“Is that, like, a sequel to The Marriage of Figaro or something?”

“That is The Marriage of Figaro.”

“Oh. Shows how much I know about this opera thing.”

----------------------------------------------------

Kurt was transfixed. The soaring voices, the heartstopping harmonies, the ridiculous story—which he could follow thanks to the electronic supertitle system at the top of the stage. Opera was the most glorious thing ever, he decided.

Until halfway through act one, when Cherubino came on stage and started singing about how every woman he sees makes his heart flutter.

“I thought Cherubino was supposed to be a boy,” Kurt whispered to Rachel. “That is clearly a girl wearing men’s clothing.”

Rachel shrugged.

Later, when Cherubino disguised himself in women’s clothing, Kurt’s jaw hit the floor. “He doesn’t look like a boy in disguise!” he whispered harshly. “He looks like a girl. Because she is a girl. Why is a guy not playing this part?”

“Shhhh!!!”

The arias were gorgeous, Kurt had to admit that.

----------------------------------

“A breeches role (also pants role or trouser role),” Kurt read aloud from Wikipedia when they got home, “is a role in which an actress appears in male clothing, or breeches , the standard male garment at the time breeches roles were introduced. In opera it also refers to any male character that is sung and acted by a female singer. Most often the character is an adolescent or a very young man, sung by a mezzo-soprano or contralto. The operatic concept assumes that the character is male, and the audience accepts him as such, even knowing that the actor is not.”

“But why do they do that?” Rachel asked. “Why not just have a man play the role, if the character is a man?”

Kurt scanned down the page. “I guess because they want the character to look young and have a high voice.”

“You know what singer I know who looks young and has a high voice?” Rachel asked, teasing.

“Shut up,” Kurt said, but he was smiling on the inside. He was silent for a minute, reading the page. “It does say here that in modern productions, some of these roles are being played by countertenors. That some directors prefer it because of the added realism. Wow, there are a ton of them! Look at this list!” He had to hit the Page Down button on his keyboard three times to get to the bottom of the (incomplete, the heading noted) list of operas with pants roles.

“That’s, like, ten times as many roles as you would be cast for on Broadway.”

“I can’t believe I never knew about this before.”

The next semester at NYADA, he signed up for an introductory opera performance class. By the end of the school year, he’d changed his major.