Opera gay
Seattle Opera &#; MARINA COSTA-JACKSON as Tatyana
| Nina Warren as Salome, Gary Smuth photo. |
Salome
Richard Strauss, who composed Salome, didn&#;t identify as queer, despite his facility at writing gorgeous love tune for women (see earlier post). But Oscar Wilde, who wrote the words for this kinkiest of operas, all but initiated latest gay culture. For Wilde, Salome was a bit of a Lord Douglas, the beautiful but heartless boy whose messed-up family situation ended up ruining Wilde&#;the way Salome&#;s messed-up family situation destroys the male who momentarily takes her fancy and whose severed top she covers with kisses in the demented final moments of this shocking opera.
Vanessa
Samuel Barber and Giancarlo Menotti met in college and rapidly became
Artist of the Week: Victoria Karkacheva
Over the years, opera has come to embody an artform that represents all shades of the human experience.
From the traditional to the abstract, every form of love that can be expressed on earth has come to the operatic stage to live. One of those shades is the value shared between those belonging to the LGBT+ group. Some of the foremost contemporary operas of our time like Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and Charles Wuorinen’s “Brokeback Mountain” hold depicted and dealt with the complexities of the community.
However, during the s composers like Alban Berg in his opera “Lulu” were already showcasing the LGBTQ+ community to audiences. Flash forward to the s and operas such as Mark Simpson’s night-club themed opera “Pleasure,” Matthew Aucoin’s “Crossing,” and the four-part “Stonewall Operas” contain helped not only normalize but uplift and rejoice the presence of Gay themes on the operatic stage.
Most recently, in the new opera “I have missed you forever” commissioned by The Dutch National Opera took a look at “queer” rel
Out of the Closet and into the Limelight
By Steven Jude Tietjen
LGBTQ audiences possess long been drawn to the opera. Now they can see their stories onstage.
“It was at the theater and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived……The moment the cracked orchestra beat out the overture from Martha, or jerked at the serenade from Rigoletto, all unintelligent and ugly things slid from him, and his senses were deliciously, yet delicately fired,” wrote Willa Cather in “Paul’s Case,” her short story about a sensitive young outsider who seeks refuge and belonging in opera and classical music. Though Cather never explicitly identifies Paul as a gay dude, there is something decidedly queer about how he finds escape and liberation at the opera house.
“There has always been something about opera that has been connected to LGBTQ culture, whether it’s a sensibility wafting through works like Norma or Rosenkavalier or the content of the story itself,” says Gregory Spears, composer of Paul’s Case, the opera based on Cather’s story. “Being queer involves speaking in code, and a big part
20 brilliant LGBTQ+ opera stars you should know
Patricia Racette
Patricia Racette is an American soprano who made her debut in Puccini’s La bohème in
She’s a Met, Royal Opera, and San Francisco Opera regular, and she came out in print in with her long-term partner Beth Clayton. Racette met and soon moved in with Clayton in , before the pair married in
“I was asked a lot of questions about that, and number one was ‘Was it scary?’, Racette said in a video for Metropolitan Opera. “And it was scary for a moment, but I quickly realised that the price wasn’t worth paying for my relationship.”
Read more: 15 great classical composers who also happened to be gay
Madama Butterfly: "Un bel dì" (Patricia Racette)
Beth Clayton
The wife of soprano Patricia Racette (see above), Beth Clayton is a mezzo-soprano who has played over 50 primary roles around the world. She has been out as a lesbian since , and married Racette in
“It was this great sense of validation as a couple. Lots of people who were young and struggling came to us and asked if this really made a