Eugene Onegin and Vladimir Lensky in duel, Ilya Repin; 1899

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

Homosexualism never sleeps.  Wasn’t sodomy once the “love that dared not speak its name”? Now it is the lust that won’t shut up.

The latest manifestation of the homosexualists’ determination to infest every corner of life, no matter how seemingly trivial, is at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.  The Met is having a Russian opera gala to open its fall season on September 23rd.  And it really is all-Russian: the opera is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, adapted from Alexander Pushkin’s epic poem of the same name; the conductor is Valery Gergiev, artistic director of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre; and the star is Russian diva Anna Netrebko (who is truly extraordinary, as is Gergiev – even if he’s usually rather disheveled).

As it happens, both Gergiev and Netrebko publicly supported Vladimir Putin’s candidacy for re-election to the Russian presidency in 2012.  Since Putin’s returning to the job, the Duma has passed laws restricting the ability of homosexualists to proselytise to minors and prohibiting the adoption of children by homosexual pairs – to shrieks of horror from the progressively-inclined throughout the West and even in Russia, where there are far fewer transgressive progressives than in the post-Christian West.

Using Gergiev’s and Netrebko’s support of Putin’s candidacy as an excuse, one Andrew Rudin has begun an on-line petition to “Dedicate 9/23 Opening Gala to support of LGTB people.”  In support of this demand, Rudin claims that “Peter Illyich Tchaikowsky (sic) is the beloved composer most widely known to have been homosexual and to have suffered for it in his lifetime.”  I am not aware that the allegations that Tchaikovsky was a homosexual have ever been proved.  Unless, as I think unlikely at this remove, someone is able to demonstrate conclusively that he was, I agree with music critic Petr Beckmann:

But until then, it is also time for the influential parts of the musical establishment to stop pretending that Tchaikovsky’s alleged homosexuality is established, accepted and uncontroversial, to realize that the burden of proof is on those who claim the unusual, and to desist from their self-serving smears of a great musician. (emphasis added)

Those who don’t suffer from the temptation to sodomy should have empathy for those who do, but should never accept their efforts to present their unfortunate condition as somehow “normal.”  We’ll see what institutional integrity the Met has in the matter.  A statement issued at the behest of Met general manager Peter Gelb, after gushing over the wonderfulness of “LGBT” artistes – likely a prerequisite for Gelb to keep his job in homo-maniacal New York City – did say that “since our mission is artistic, it is not appropriate for our performances to be used by us for political purposes, no matter how noble or right the cause.”

I hope the Met means it.  And if the Met were to dedicate this opening to anybody, wouldn’t it more appropriate to dedicate this artistic expression of a slowly reviving post-Soviet Russia to all those who were murdered by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union?

— Comments —

Jewel A. writes:

Anna Netrebko is all loveliness.

John E. writes:

Whether Tchaikovsky was or was not a practicing homosexual, he could only have been at the very most a closet one. If in fact he was a closet one, he as a public figure stands in stark contrast to practicing homosexuals in our day who are also famous in that, in our day, they are not compelled to stay in the closet and seem not to have the discipline or discretion (taste) to keep these matters private.

I have noticed also in our day that, in terms of musical creation, no one holds a candle to Tchaikovsky. Is the “oppression” he faced related to his superior artistic expression a matter of causation, or merely coincidence? Did he achieve greatness in spite of society’s prejudices, or could his greatness have depended upon them? Is it possible that the freedom to come out of the closet makes one’s artistic muscles flabby, tending toward a banal output? Is it possible that the freedom to come out of the closet causes those who are not in (or of whom we do not even speculate as being in) the closet to begin with, also to atrophy? Where is the Beethoven or Brahms of our era or the immediately preceding one?

Laura writes :

So true.

Sexual repression stimulates genius. Self-mortification makes the artist soar.

Sage McLaughlin writes:

You said that, “Sexual repression stimulates genius. Self-mortification makes the artist soar.” There’s little question this is true.

I am reminded of something that I read by Anthony Daniels (under the nomme de plume Theodore Dalrymple), that has stuck with me a long time, and is striking for its boldness and clarity: If censorship were really bad for art, we should have little in the way of an artistic heritage, and should now be living in the midst of an artistic golden age. The opposite seems rather to be the case.

A related formulation is “art through adversity.” The picture depends on the frame, as it were.

Jane S. writes:

For me, it isn’t so much about repressing your sexuality as channeling it into something wholesome and productive. Like marriage and the domestic life. Or art.

 Laura writes:

Yes, that’s a better way of putting it.

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