Scenes from a revolution
“This isn’t an opera that touches on queer themes; it’s a bundle of queer themes tied up in an opera.”
gay gay gay gay gay
So brutal but also so joyful
Composer Philip Venables talks about queer utopias and bending gender and genre in The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions which opens at the Park Avenue Armory this week.
Masc et femme fatale
parterre box celebrates the beginning of Pride Month with a throwback to one of the queerer events in recent operatic memory: a bit of Carmen starring Jamie Barton and Stephanie Blythe!
“My little Welsh brain just went boom”
A Welsh opera singer has said the art must have more LGBTQ+ representation if it is to survive.
Hadrian
“With its blend of history, political intrigue, and fantastical invention, all woven into a heartbreaking love story, Hadrian gives one of history’s greatest queer romances the full, grand opera treatment.”
Cruising
Have you ever gotten some action at the opera? Had an assignation while in standing-room? Crept off to the toilet (or elsewhere) with a handsome man during a performance?
Peak gay achieved
“For five years, concert pianist Theo Mangrove has been living at his family’s home in East Kill, New York, recovering from a nervous breakdown that derailed his career.”
To Wong Foo, Fangs for Everything
“The opera The Lord of Cries. . . . with the equally astounding Anthony Roth Costanzo.”
Billy Budd, queen of the birds
The pretty boy who got a bum rap.
Oh the ombra of it all!
The expression “gayer than eight guys fucking nine guys” gets thrown around a lot these days…
Keep it gay
Our Own Joel Rozen in Slate ponders the good gay vs. bad gay politics of Zachary Woolfe‘s New York Times celebration of Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Murder on the orientation express
Rufus Wainwright is determined to offer a spectacle and that intention overrides all other considerations.
Happy National Coming Out Day
“Love is love,” tweets tenor Michael Fabiano.
Rara avis
Tomorrow (Sunday) a staged reading of The Lisbon Traviata will be performed at New York’s LGBT Community Center.
If it ain’t ‘Brokeback’
Between staging, music, and material, it’s hard to decide what feels most broken about New York City Opera’s American premiere of Brokeback Mountain.
Thanks for scaring
I found Fellow Travelers intellectually and politically riveting, musically thrilling, and profoundly moving. It was a triumph.
Why can’t a woman be more like a man?
“The background chorus characters in the Broadway show I saw tonight unobtrusively included a gay couple, and jaded though I sometimes am I think that’s really neat.”
An evening in the Sewers
Mean, moody, magnificent Matt Baume (left) hosts a live version of his celebrated podcast The Sewers of Paris this afternoon beginning at 5:00 PM Eastern time.
Vo’ farmi più gaia, più fulgida ancora
“City Opera invites you, our fans, to march with the artists who create the operas you love.”
And the ‘Angels’ sing
Angels in America reimagined as an actual, full-blown opera.
You stepped out of a dream
“36.000 Swarovski-Steine werden dort aufgebracht.”
Chat: Pikovaya dama
Parterre fave Stefan Herheim returns to Dutch National Opera to direct Pikovaya dama, in which the director attempts to reflect on the composer’s life, notably his hidden love for men.
High on a hill was a lonely goatherd
“Revised version of Brokeback Mountain debuts in Salzburg”
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).