Cynthia Donnell wrote: > > Trevor, isn't the character's name "Beppo"?
No, it's definitely Betto. Betto di Signa.
The family members in Gianni Schicchi work as an ensemble, a kind of mini-chorus, but also have their individual characteristics - Zita the matriarch, who won't allow the young Rinuccio to marry Schicchi's daughter; Simone, the oldest, a former magistrate, who thinks he should have a prior claim on Buoso's estate; Betto, the black sheep of the family, related only by marriage, a drunkard and a kleptomaniac* and the two married couples, Ciesca/Marco and Nella/Gherardo; Ciesca and Marco are older and there is no reference to there being any children; there is also some suggestion that Marco is very henpecked; Nella and Gherardo have a child - though if yours is a workshop production this might be omitted.
There are numerous references throughout to Nella and Gherardo as a married couple. If you're short of men, I suppose it would just work to make one of them a woman, but I don't think it will work awfully well. Is she singing it an octave higher, as a soprano, or as a female tenor? If it's the former, the sonorities of the ensembles are going to come out all wrong. Also, if it's a trouser role, surely that means she will still be "Gherard-O" rather than have the character change sex - in this particular instance you just can't do that because of the couple. Frankly I think this is a mistake and your workshop would have been better employed casting outside and maybe buying somebody in.
*I can't lay my hands on my score at the moment, but when I did it two and a half years ago, I both directed it and made the singing translation, and I don't think I invented the kleptomaniac part. I believe it's in the original stage directions (something about him having deep pockets in his coat, and admiring Buoso's silverware and then putting it in his pockets) We continued this thread a lot of the way through: no prop was safe from our Betto! When the lawyer came in and laid out his pen and ink on the table, Betto stole the pen. When he came to write the will, of course he couldn't find his pen, so Betto "lent" him one he just happened to have about his person - and the lawyer gratefully handed it back to him at the end.
Linda
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