With thy deluding form thou giv’st us pain, While the bright nymph betrays us to the swain.

In musicals there’s a specific kind of song called an “I Want” song that appears in almost every show, usually in the first act sung by a main character.  (The term was likely coined by Lehman Engel, a Broadway composer and conductor.)  An “I Want” song lets the audience see what’s in the character’s heart, their deepest and perhaps most secret longings.  It’s that classic moment when a character gazes off into the middle distance, the music swells, and you know exactly what’s coming—as the cliché goes, words alone aren’t enough anymore, they just have to sing about it.

Sometimes a character expresses a longing for something specific—a house in the suburbs, a handsome prince, or even just one day spent in the sun.  But sometimes the longing is more all-encompassing—the character is searching for something they can’t quite name, a life beyond the one they know, a place they can barely imagine, where they can feel like they truly belong.

This kind of longing feels deeply queer to me, a longing for a world that is not yet in existence: one that lives only in our imaginations, but is still worth searching for. In the words of José Esteban Muñoz, “Queerness is not yet here… We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality… Queerness is a… mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present.” (Cruising Utopia 2009).  It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that many of the most iconic “I Want” songs in the musical theatre canon were written by queer people, many of whom experienced, and in some cases did not survive, the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 90s.

I’ve collected here some of my favourite “I Want” songs, interpreting the genre generously.  There are songs about wanting to be loved and seen by others, wanting your outside appearance to match how you feel inside, and even songs about disappointed desire and despair.  What I find most interesting is how many of these songs reference some kind of "inside" or "outside"—either an entrance into another world, or an escape from the confines of a stifling situation.  To me this speaks to the experience of "coming out," a term which now means declaring one’s identity to a possibly hostile society, but which in an earlier form meant being welcomed into a queer community with open arms.

Sometimes the freedom of "out there" turns out to be disappointing or even dangerous, as in Into the Woods or The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  Other times the promised safe haven of "inside" proves to be restrictive and oppressive, as in Hadestown or Evening Primrose.  Sometimes even the burden of wanting seems like too much, as in the Baker’s song “No More” or Elphaba’s “I’m Not That Girl.”  And yet every time the curtain rises, the search continues: for love, for belonging, and for freedom.

Program Notes by Camille Rogers

Throughout history, women have been portrayed on the musical stage as one-dimensional or stereotypical characters. In this recital, I explore a few of these common archetypes of femininity.  

Normally, a ‘good’ female character is portrayed as one of the male-centric roles of wife, daughter, or mother. In contrast, a woman who does not fit into one of these models is often cast as a villain, ostracized or mocked. One such stock character which appears throughout the history of opera is the Whore, represented in this recital program by Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre's Sémélé. 

Operas and theatrical music of this era tended to echo sexual politics at the French court—in particular, fears that the King was being influenced by his mistresses.  De la Guerre’s Sémélé can be interpreted as a meditation on these anxieties. In the first recitative, the narrator sets the scene: the Princess Semele has been enjoying a love affair with Jupiter, the King of the gods. The all-powerful Jupiter has promised to grant his lover one wish—anything in the world. But Semele, doubting his identity, has asked for him to reveal himself to her in his true form. What Semele doesn’t know is that, because she is mortal, the sheer brilliance of her lover’s divine form will be fatal to her. After the drama has played out, the narrator returns to deliver the moral of the story: mixing love and ambition will never end well.  Such a message might easily be interpreted as a warning to the mistresses of Louis XIV.

Another female figure was feared at court during this time period: the Witch. Belief in witchcraft and in particular in the potential power of the devil was still widespread in the late seventeenth century. One particular scandal, known as l’Affaire des Poisons, brought to light the depth of superstition prevalent even in France’s upper classes. Lasting from approximately 1677 to 1682, the Affair involved several members of Louis XIV’s court. To the great discomfort of the king, it appeared that for many years, members of his court had been visiting fortune tellers—known as devineresses—for services ranging from romantic advice to purveying love potions and poisons. Several high-born ladies were tried and convicted of murder by poison, resulting in widespread paranoia about sorcery.

Like Semele, Jean-Baptiste Lully’s 1686 Armide plays on male anxieties about over-reaching women gaining sexual power over men. In Armide, a Saracen sorceress and warrior princess has seduced and enslaved all but one of the Christian knights who are her enemies—only Renaud has escaped her power. Waiting until her enemy is totally disarmed by his surroundings, Armide enchants Renaud to make him fall asleep, seizing the chance to take her revenge.

Although Armide seems to wield unlimited magical power, the ostensible moral of the opera is that her power—and in fact any woman’s power—is merely an illusion. At the time women were believed to lack rationality and self-control, and in particular, they were seen as having no restraint when it came to their sexuality. Armide’s second act monologue “Enfin il est en ma puissance” dramatizes the sorceress’s struggle against her own desires. While her rational mind tells her that Renaud is her enemy and must be destroyed, Armide’s heart is filled first with pity, and then with an attraction so strong she is unable to resist its pull.

The Warrior

Gioachino Rossini’s Giovanna d’Arco depicts the very beginning of Joan of Arc’s story, just after she has been called by an angel to leave her countryside home and join the army dressed as a boy. Joan of Arc legendarily led French troops to victory during the Hundred Years War, when she was still only a teenager. She became a martyr when she was burned at the stake by her enemies, the English—ostensibly not for any crimes associated with warfare, but for her refusal to shed the men’s clothing she habitually wore. In many visual depictions, she is softened and feminized in order to appease the heterosexual male gaze—in others, however, her determination and virility shine through.

The female warrior, whether disguised as a young soldier or openly garbed as an amazon, has been a figure of fascination in many cultures and throughout many centuries. She brazenly contradicts the stereotype of female weakness, as well the ideal of feminine passivity. Her place among the masculine hierarchy of the battlefield shows her worth beyond the restrictive female hierarchy of exclusively sexual power.