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Orpheus is a very significant character in baroque opera. This article uses the queer approach to analyse it in the works of such composers as Peri, Caccini, Monteverdi, Landi, Rossi, Louis Lully, Telemann and Gluck. First, it considers how the mythical material from Ovid and Virgil is reduce and moralised to fit the decorum of operatic genre. Even though the violence suffered and acted by women is understated, as is the bisexuality of Orpheus, the subtext is intelligible. Moreover, as Wittig put it, they help construct Orpheus as a “man”. According to this “technology of gender” (T. de Lauretis), the tragic or happy outcome of these operas shed some light on the heterosexual/homosexual representation of the character from neo-platonist Renaissance to Enlightenment. Today, scenic interpretations involve a real “gender performance” (J. Butler) in order to deal with the wide range of voices attributed to Orpheus (baritone, tenor, alto or soprano castrato, female mezzo-soprano, countertenor) and with travesty roles. The present-day competition between female and male singer for the title role of Gluck’s opera is rooted in a misinterpretation of the place of female singers in baroque era and in a very recent myth of the castrato figure. Nevertheless, subversive voices can still be heard, in the orphic operas of the traditional repertoire.