And if you feel compelled to espouse such a world-view, you can surely do better that the tired libel that “queens … like to think everyone in the world is either a dyke or a poof.”

In the first place, that’s simply untrue; in the second place, performers in opera are not exactly a cross-section of the population. They are not representative of “everyone in the world” but are historically, and remain, a very special subculture.

trappole, why could she do better?

I’m beginning to think that this thread really needs a “dyke ya know” tag.

This is an article where Lucine stresses “SHE IS NOT A LESBIAN!!!”

http://tinyurl.com/43y2cu

“And I said to him, Kurt (I always called him Kurt), if they’re not working then why do you keep them on the payroll? Oh, I will never forget it!”

I recently heard some short–(and non-vocal)pieces of Wuorinen, at the TASHI reunion concert at Town Hall, in NYC..granted, they were Chamber works..and reworkings of Early English pieces(Byrd, I think?)–but listening to them , for the first time,I could quite easily imagine Wuorinen doing “Brokeback”(assuming that it should be done, which I have my doubts over…) in an easy -to-digest manner.

I don’t recall “Haroun” sounding like just a re-hash of the second Viennese school output–imho…

I heard a retrospective concert almost ten years ago of Wuorinen’s works with those of another composer who was a contemporary of his. Wuorinen’s stuff was the backward looking material. He was stuck for apparently his entire composing career in the second viennese school. It all sounded the same, from beginning to end. 50 years or more of music, and nothing was more advanced, or even distinguishable, from the work of Berg, Schonberg, and Webern.

The other composer on the program went through a 12 tone phase obviously, but then grew beyond that and did the more interesting work over the course of his career. He didn’t have his nose up Schonberg’s ass his whole life.

It seems to La Cieca she might have touched on this subject when she presented Spontini’s OLYMPIA (Olympie) on Unnatural Acts of Opera. In that case the composer revised the original tragic ending to a more cheerful one in order to conform to international taste. (Presumably, in France the public would have known the original work so well they would not have tolerated so significant a deviation from the plot.)

Lucine is from the old school where “lesbian” carried a very large amount of baggage in the manner of “The Killing of Sister George,” and it may well be that she is not comfortable identifying with that lifestyle, even if she appreciates that most of her romantic partners are women. And if she is not clear on how she identifies, that would be only one of her little eccentricities.

Perhaps Mr. Duesing wore full leather for the same reason (accordig to Paul Lynde) that motorcycle gangs wear full leather: “Because chiffon wrinkles!”

I’ve met the adopted daughter. Even at 83, La Amara could do a lot better. Just putting it out there.