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Falling Short:

Letting Stories of Discrimination Against Transgender Singers Be Heard

Established Gender Roles in Classical Music

  • Ensemble directors, or their higher-ups, occasionally instruct "men to wear suits" and "women to wear dresses." This leaves gender non-conforming individuals to choose an unnecessarily gendered outfit (Hugill, 2021, para. 5).

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  • Often, high voices are associated with women and low voices with men. This is not always true, thus, promoting gender bias in casting music and opera productions, and discriminating in other facets (Hugill, 2021, para. 6).

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  • Due to the cultural and long-held gender associations with specific voice types, solo vocal pieces will often deal with gendered topics and place transgender or gender non-conforming individuals into character stereotypes that do not align with their gender identity (Hugill, 2021, para. 7).

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Image of Max Hightower performing. Attributed to the Hightower Family

on ABC News.

Casting and Voicing in Schools:

A Case Study of Max Hightower

  • Max Hightower was a transgender student involved in choir and theater at Sherman High School in Texas (Runnels, 2023, paras. 2-3).

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  • In his senior production of Oklahoma!, Hightower was cast as Ali Hakim, the (male) peddler (Runnels, 2023, para. 4).

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  • Following the casting decision, the school announced that the show would be postponed and recast with students only playing roles of their gender assigned at birth (Runnels, 2023, para 5).

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  • The school faced backlash, locally and nationally, and administrators decided against their gender policies. Instead, they opted for the youth production of Oklahoma!, both halving the runtime and cutting Hightower’s part down to just “The Peddler” (Runnels, 2023, paras 6-7).

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  • Both the Hightowers and followers of this case agreed that administration replacing the version of the show was an action against the trans students involved and not made for the school’s reasoning of age appropriateness (Runnels, 2023, paras. 8-9).

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  • The school’s shortlasting policy of only allowing students to play roles of their gender assignment at birth was the first instance in Texas to restrict theater based on sex (Runnels, 2023, para. 23).

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  • Similar restrictions in school choirs and theater productions have occurred in other states which is a violation of Title IX (Runnels, 2023, paras. 23-26).

Discrimination in the Opera Industry: A Case Study of Breanna Sinclairé

  • Breanna Sinclairé is a transgender opera singer.

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  • Sinclairé was the first transgender person to sing the national anthem at a professional sports game in 2015 (Veltman, 2019, para. 3).

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  • A vocal coach cut off communications with Sinclairé when she told him that she was transitioning (Veltman, 2019, para. 24).

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  • While studying to be a singer, her roommate kicked her out because he felt uncomfortable with her identity. She had to stop her studies and training because she was living on the streets, solely focusing on survival (Veltman, 2019, paras. 25-28).

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  • Sinclairé thanks a random man who talked to her while she was homeless and gave her a check to complete her studies for her undergraduate and graduate degrees (Veltman, 2019, paras. 30-36).

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  • Estrogen does not heighten the voice like testosterone lowers it, so Sinclairé has been working with a coach to increase her singing range (Veltman, 2019, paras. 39-40).

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  • Since cisgendered men can work to increase their singing range, Sinclairé still worries about sounding like a man and being labeled as a countertenor (Veltman, 2019, para. 42).

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  • Sinclairé wants to be viewed as the woman she is, which includes by opera and casting companies (Veltman, 2019, para. 43).

Image of Breanna Sinclairé with a choir. Retrieved from breannasinclaire.com.

In this interview, Teiya Kasahara talks about gender roles in music and how they are combatting exclusivity in opera.

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