Ladies as gentlemen: the cross-dressing women of Edwardian musical theatre

The Guardian: The runaway hit of the 1913 season at the Royal Opera House was the British premiere of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. It begins with a girl dressed as a boy, Octavian, scrambling out of bed after what has clearly been a night of passion with an older woman. Almost 100 years ago did respectable audiences blink at the sight of this cross-dressing hanky panky? Not at all: husbands and wives and (chaperoned) courting couples alike enjoyed the charged erotic spectacle.