(a) Gender and sex in the seventeenth-century:
— Medical and physiological considerations on the body: humoralism, temperaments, the one-sex model according to Thomas Laqueur and other approaches. Difference between the sexes is quantitative and not qualitative. Being female or male is a constructed social role and not a phyisological difference.
— Female singers and castratos, physiology of the voice. Why are gender issues essential to understand the operatic genre and its performers.

(b) The Italian operatic stage:
— Appearance of the first professional female singers
— Testimonies and descriptions of singers, especially women and castratos, prima donna and primo uomo.
— Singers and actresses: Anna Renzi, the so-called first prima donna; the actress and singer Virginia Ramponi. Castratos: Marcantonio Pasqualini, Loreto Vittori, Atto Melani, Siface.

(c) Case study: Francesca Caccini, La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina (1625), first opera composed by a woman
— How to make a professional career as a female musician? Caccini as a singer, teacher and composer at the Medici court. Female patronage of the grand duchess Christine de Lorraine and Maria Magdalena of Austria.
–– Study of the libretto and music. Plot: opposition between a good androgynous magician competing with an evil, lascivious one to control the knight Ruggiero. Caccini’s musical strategies to define both women (modes, style, recitative, arias, canzonettas, monody, and polyphony).

(d) Outside Italy
— France: composer Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, tragédie lyrique Céphale et Procris. Female Singers: Anne Chabanceau de La Barre, Marie Le Rochois, Marie-Louise Desmatins, Fanchon Moreau, La Maupin (Julie d'Aubigny). Why did the French dislike castratos?
— England and Germanic countries: importation of the Italian genre and its performers. Female performers: Francesca Margherita de l’Epine, Catherine Tofts. Vienna: Margherita Basile appointed at the imperial court in 1631, the prima donna Giulia Masotti in Vienna and Innbruck.