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.
Who is this neanderthal?
You don’t get on a “sex offenders” list unless you have committed a crime. Anyone with a 8th grade education knows that.
My guess is that if he truly thinks that pedophilia and homoeroticism are one and the same then he is probably a closet case with a rather over-large wife and 3 fairly miserable kids who spends his evenings watching Survivor and Big Brother and tries to convince himself it’s not because they parade a bunch of 20-something guys with their shirts off.
Amen on both counts.
100% in agreement with you there Cieca. To the best of my knowledge there is not proof that Britten was a pedo. I am not a fan of Britten’s music and I find his comments insulting.
And there’s also this little nugget which speaks volumes:
“Would I go to a Gergiev concert now, and further enrich him? No. Would I buy any more of his CDs? Probably not, unless the critics I respect told me that the performance was one so superlative that I would be impoverished by not having it in my library.”
OK, either you have ethics or you don’t. Whether your library would be ‘impoverished’ or not shouldn’t matter. Of course, this type of hogwash is always about the other guy.
Yawn. Just remember this is from the Daily Telegraph. A rather squalid and provincial right wing rag.
What a wonderful rationale for piracy this is! Don’t actually give money to Polanski or Gergiev, just steal their movies/cds or sneak into concerts. Clearly, theft is the only way to separate artist and work.
In all seriousness, I think there is merit to line that introduces the horrible Britten rant, but that certainly isn’t something that hasn’t been stated before.
That paragraph quoted above concludes:
“…and so when I listen to an opera such as Death in Venice I start to find him repulsive. I know my reaction to the work is only because I know so much about the man.”
Which leads me to wonder if Mr. Heffer has read the novella upon which the opera is based, and whether he has a similar reaction to Thomas Mann?
Cieca, darlin’, you go girl!
Completely agree with you that Heffer should COME OUT and admit he’s disgusted by homoeroticism. I admit that Britten’s sometimes smarmy intrusion of Christianity into stories where it has no business (Lucretia, Curlew River) I find tedious and tendentious, in both cases to suggest that if the characters had been Christians there would have been no rape (Huh?), is at least a flaw in great works of music-theater. And had I been on the Lido, I’m sure I’d have preferred Aschenbach or one of the gondeliers to Tadziu — but I fail to see that opera as “grooming” — I mean, while it explores Aschenbach’s homoerotic psychology in fascinating depth, it doesn’t suggest we run right out and follow his example — it even suggests that pederasty leads to cholera. Peter Grimes may or may not be a pederast, but his mistreatment of his apprentices brings him to an early watery grave, while Peter Quint is already dead. Are Vere and Claggart inspired to their misbehaviors by Billy’s beauty? Well, yes – but that doesn’t turn out well for anybody either.
But all that’s by the by. Great creative artists seldom get to choose what themes will inspire them. If it’s not a patron or a paying public who does that, it’s their own psychology. We never get to choose that. If Britten was inspired by the admittedly fraught subject of adolescent sexuality to produce some of the greatest operatic works of the century, perhaps it is society’s attitude towards adolescent sexuality that ought to be re-evaluated.
To which I’d also add (as a Jewish Wagnerite), “half-hidden hints of anti-semitism” — which half? Can they be ignored? (That’s a personal question; we each come up with an answer that suits ourselves.) Is that ALL it’s about? (No one would say that.) Can the hints be ignored? (You know it.) Is the Ring one of the supreme works of art produced by our civilization? I think that one answers itself.
but I fail to see that opera as “grooming”
Well, strictly speaking, there is one whole scene that takes place at the hair salon.
Why drag the laundry out when you’re about to score –
This henna lasts a month and not a moment more!
Never ask a lady what the lady did before
Ask what the lady’s doin’,
Speak up and you’re a shoe-in,
Ask her what the lady’s doin’ now.
(Carolyn Leigh)