I was enjoying my usual Sunday reset—a matcha latte, a casual stroll through the organic farmers' market, and a moment of quiet reflection on how good of an ally I am—when I saw the news. Tobias Picker’s opera "Lili Elbe," based on the same historical figure as the 2015 film "The Danish Girl," is making its U.S. premiere. Naturally, as someone who considers that film a seminal moment of my own personal journey toward realizing other people exist, I purchased opening night tickets. I was ready to be moved. I was ready to watch a performer bravely struggle with the sheer, unimaginable weight of wearing a dress.
Imagine my surprise, and frankly, my profound disappointment, when the curtain rose and I realized the title role was being sung by an actual transgender opera singer.
Call me old-fashioned, but there is something deeply unsettling about this new trend of authentic casting. When I go to the theater to consume a marginalized narrative, I expect to see a recognizable, conventionally attractive British man fighting for his life against a corset. I want to see the strain in his neck as he affects a breathy, fragile whisper. I want to know that when the maestro lowers his baton, that performer gets to wipe off his makeup, put his slacks back on, and go do a press tour about how exhausting it was to pretend to be someone else for a month.
That is what we in the cultured class call acting. When you cast a transgender woman to play a transgender woman, where is the stretch? Where is the risk? Where is the six-page magazine spread detailing the grueling three weeks the actor spent learning how to walk in heels from a highly paid movement coach?
Let us never forget the profound sacrifices made by Eddie Redmayne in the 2015 film adaptation. The man had to learn how to properly hold a handbag. He had to lower his gaze demurely. He had to endure months of grueling interviews where he solemnly nodded while directors praised him for being so in touch with his feminine side. That is the kind of blue-collar, in-the-trenches acting that built this industry. When you hand the role to a trans woman, you are completely bypassing the hero's journey of the straight male actor discovering empathy for the very first time. It is, quite frankly, selfish of the trans community to hoard these learning opportunities for themselves.
The economic ripple effects of this casting choice are devastating. Think of the ecosystem that surrounds a prestige cisgender-led queer production. The dialect coaches. The prosthetics teams who spend hours applying subtle, tragic cheekbones. The publicists who carefully draft the actor’s inevitable apology statement when they say something slightly off-putting on a late-night talk show. Tobias Picker’s opera has callously bypassed this entire cottage industry by simply hiring someone who already understands the assignment. It is a terrifying precedent for the local economy.
And what of the press junkets? The promotional tour for a project starring a straight man in a trans role is a delicate, beautiful dance. We get to watch journalists ask him how he found the courage to put on lipstick, and we get to watch him humbly deflect the praise while subtly ensuring everyone knows exactly how much courage it actually took. We get the magnificent spectacle of the director assuring everyone that the actor is, in fact, incredibly heterosexual and happily married to a woman, just so the audience doesn't get confused. Tobias Picker’s opera deprives us of this entire cultural ritual. When the lead is a trans woman, what is the interviewer supposed to ask her? About her vocal technique? Her phrasing? It is an absolute nightmare for the entertainment media.
When you hire an authentic performer, you completely rob the audience of the joy of watching a wealthy celebrity suffer for their art.
Julian is entirely right. I brought this up at a dinner party last weekend, and the table went completely silent—a clear sign that I had struck a profound, undeniable truth that everyone else was simply too intimidated to vocalize. We have become so obsessed with lived experience that we have forgotten the true purpose of art: allowing comfortable people to watch other comfortable people pretend to be uncomfortable for two and a half hours, followed by a standing ovation and champagne.
The tragedy of authentic casting is that it leaves absolutely no room for an actor to pat himself on the back on national television.
I tried to explain this to a young, progressive colleague of mine, and she had the audacity to suggest that transgender people deserve to see themselves represented authentically on stage. I nearly choked on my organic watercress. Representation? The theater isn't about representation. It's about my emotional catharsis. It's about me sitting in the mezzanine, safely observing a marginalized identity through the comfortable, sanitized filter of an A-list celebrity I recognize from a cologne commercial. When the performance is too real, it breaches the invisible wall that protects the audience from actually having to care about the issue once they leave the lobby.
The performance of the actual opera singer at the premiere was, I suppose, technically flawless. Her baritone was rich, her emotional resonance was undeniable, and she carried the tragedy and triumph of Lili Elbe’s life with a grounded, effortless grace. But that effortlessness is exactly the problem. She wasn't trying hard enough to convince me she deserved to be there. She simply was there. It lacked the sweaty, desperate ambition of a man who knows his Best Actor campaign depends entirely on how delicately he touches a silk scarf in the second act.
If we allow this to continue, where does it end? Will we start casting actual Danish people as well? Must every character be played by someone who has lived their exact demographic reality? If so, my dear friends, the theater will become a very dull place indeed, devoid of the magnificent, self-congratulatory back-patting that makes gala season so much fun.
So, a small request to the opera community, and to the arts world at large: please, have some compassion. The next time you are casting a historically significant transgender heroine, think of the voiceless. Think of the straight, cisgender leading men who are waiting by the phone, eager to dramatically stare into a mirror while a mournful cello plays. They need this more than you do.