Gay wrestling
La Cieca should know by now that any think piece that kicks off with the locution “I have from time to time wrestled with this conundrum” is just going to piss her off and she should just close the tab. But she didn’t, and this is what she found a little lower down (in more than one sense of the word):
I have always been rather disgusted by Benjamin Britten’s distinctly unhealthy interest in young boys. There is no proof he ever engaged in sexual activity with any of them: but his behaviour would today come under the heading of “grooming” and he would have been put on the sex offenders’ register. Much of Britten’s music I find magnificent; he is possibly the only true genius among our 20th-century composers. Yet the homoeroticism of some of his later works, or rather the paedophilia, I find repulsive
That this same Simon Heffer manages to drag in the tiredest of all Wagner canard (the Ring is “laden with half-hidden hints of anti-Semitism”) doesn’t surprise me in the least: those who triumphantly spout one bit of received wisdom are likely to believe just about anything they’re read a hundred times before.
But let La Cieca stay within her bailiwick here and simply remind the smarmy Mr. Heffer that “homoeroticism” and “paedophilia” are two distinctly different things, the confusion of which has led to much hatred and discrimination against gay people. If he finds homoeroticism repulsive, at least he should be be man enough to say it straighforwardly, not with the weasel words he chose.
Pls see 67.
Instead of the Heff, La Cieca could have linked to
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6258090/Frank-Johnson-why-being-clasped-by-Maria-Callas-was-my-finest-hour.html
which is elegantly written and great fun.
But less provocative, of course.
Of course, people are forgetting to throw Noye’s Fludde and The Little Sweep into the mix,of Brittens fascination of casting ‘little boys in opera’.Plus Miles’ uncle in Turn of the Screw is undisputedly gay.
If people want to see straight out ‘a explicit interpretation’ of the Turn of the Screw’ just go to the Philips made video with actors (in Rumania?) to accompany the soundtrack used for the vinyl/ CD recording release. The opening filmed scenes depicting what went on happily with Quint and Miles, before Quint’s death, (pre the opening of the opera score) is ‘hardly vague’.
Whether Britten openly put such ‘strange attraction /or fascination of chldrens’ antics into real action, no will never know. The outcome that people would best like to remember it ,is :he turned it in benign action, writing works exploring aspects of it. Then though, if people delve into what is plainly before you, discussing the subject openly : people become ‘queasy’.Unfortunately for his own posterity, he never wrote an opera with passionate moments for a female to put people ‘off the scent’.
The big wrestling match in Britten’s operas is between the 2 tantalizing ‘opposing hints’ ever present, and struggling. That of (a) inner repression and (b) the unrequited, …the need for open full expression.
Sums up Britten himself exactly.
Mirrored in just one photograph taken by Vogue once, in an article: what was supposedly Britten’s bedroom …….making great point of a bed ( a single bed). People know it was complete rot.
First opera ever attended: Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Los Angeles, 1988
First opera recording bought: Britten’s Peter Grimes, the Decca Britten/Pears, bought the day after attending the Dream
That people still debate whether Britten is a great opera composer (he is) and whether his opera’s are standard rep (some are) is unreal to me. Grimes, Budd and the Dream are secure and so are the Screw and Albert Herring, a favorite of small companies and colleges.
I’ve seen at least one production of every one of his operas and one thing is abundantly clear: Britten had a major gift for writing for the stage. His sense of pacing, of being able to paint a mood with a stroke of orchestral color or a phrase, of text setting (by far the best setter of English ever), being able to conjure up vivid characters quickly, of setting and maintaining a mood are incredible. Give me Billy Budd, Turn of the Screw and Death in Venice over the rum-ti-tum florid nonsense of *shudder* Donizetti *shudder*, Rossini, Bellini and early Verdi any day.
I love that Britten’s operas make people uncomfortable and creeped out. I also that he didn’t bow to pressure and add female voices/trouser roles to Billy Budd, what a pleasure to have a full-length opera and not to have to hear a soprano for once. One thing I’ve not seen mentioned is that people tend to think to that Britten is “lusting” after the apprentice and Miles and so on, but it’s almost certain that young Ben was diddled when he was sent away to boarding school and I’ve long felt that his portraits of innocence destroyed were self-portraits.
Henry Holland:
Amen!
This looks interesting, a new Alan Bennett play:
Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station
The “young man from the local bus station” is obviously for Auden.
One of the major disappointments for me with the failure of Gerard Mortier’s plans at City Opera was the cancellation of the amazing Deborah Warner production of Death in Venice, which I saw at ENO two years ago. It had very effective use of light and shade and some great dancing for a change. DiV is creeping in to the standard rep too.
I’m shocked that anyone could quibble about whether or not Polanski drugged a 13 year old. She was not old enough to make that choice, and there is virtually no difference between Polanksi giving her drugs and the pusher who hangs out next to school playgrounds to sell drugs to kids. And frankly, He’s a genius. I personally feel had he gone to trial, he would have faced far worse consequences than he did with the plea deal; I don’t think anyone in their right mind would have acquitted him. So he made a plea agreement and than fled, and wound up not facing any consequences at all. Yes, it’s true that he left behind his adopted country. But he went to France, not some Third World country, and he continued right on with his career and won an Oscar. I don’t see that he’s really paid much of a price. Until now.