"The Learned Female Soprano"

Considers why the British Bluestocking women writers, who generally celebrated women who challenged misogynistic assumptions of women's incapacity, were not conspicuous supporters of the of female sopranos who successfully challenged the castrati monopoly on brilliant singing and demonstrated a female capacity for learned musicianship. In part, this was because a baroque aesthetic of artifice and wonder was replaced by a newer aesthetic of ostensible verisimilitude and because a chamber as opposed to a theatrical styles was adopted as a general preference. It was not merely because resistance to women's soliciting attention to themselves by performing was heightened by late eighteenth-century sentimental codes of femininity. Several pious and patriotic women writers who were music lovers found the alternative oratorio repertoire much easier to support.