Altered Voices and Gender-Bending: Prince, Camille, Opera, and Society

Abstract

During the 1980s Prince composed and produced songs under a variety of alter-egos. One alter-ego was a character he called Camille. As Camille, Prince sang in a voice altered by technology—it was high pitched and sounded feminine or androgynous. This article seeks to draw a connection between the androgyny in Prince’s appearance, music, and vocal performance in the 1980s, and in his Camille persona, and types of gender boundary crossings in three periods in the evolution of opera performance.