You're good Pytor Llyich but you never played Vegas
Posted on 08/30/2013 12:23:12 PM PDT by Borges
A prominent Russian screenwriter working on a film about Tchaikovsky’s life that has just received state financing set off a firestorm this week by saying that the biopic would not focus on the composer’s sexuality because “it is far from a fact that Tchaikovsky was a homosexual.”
“Only philistines think this,” the screenwriter, Yuri Arabov, told the newspaper Izvestia of the commonly accepted view of Tchaikovsky’s sexual orientation. “What philistines believe should not be shown in films.”
Mr. Arabov, who is known for his screenplays for films by Alexander Sokurov about the inner lives of Lenin, Hitler and Emperor Hirohito, told the newspaper in an interview published Aug. 20 that the movie, which is called “Tchaikovsky” and scheduled for release in 2015, would show Russia’s most revered composer as a man who “is marked by rumors and suffers greatly from this.”
Contemporary scholars still debate how Tchaikovsky died, with some claiming that he was driven to suicide out of torment over his sexuality. For decades, the cause of death was reported as cholera.
(Excerpt) Read more at artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com ...
He constantly refers to ‘X’ as standing in the way of life’s ambitions (letters had to be self censored this way since they could be read by government officials). There are also frankly yucky sections of him inviting this or that young man to his house in barely veiled erotic language. There’s the aforementioned disastrous marriage which he entered into as a cover (his mentally ill wife play along) - after a short period of marriage he attempted suicide. There is also his death which sufficient evidence has shown to be suicide due to blackmail based on revealing his predilection.
...but can he twerk?
You have to separate the art from the artist. It is not always synonymous. The great painter Caravaggio painted some of the most magnificent Christian themed paintings of all time, yet in real life was said to have committed murder. So when I listen to Tchaikovsky, I couldn’t care less if he was gay or not.
It appears that Tchaikovsky was on that thin line between black depressions and suicidal inclinations.....and brilliant musical artistry.
So many composers of genius died from premature, tragic, unnatural or odd deaths, including Smetana, Granados, von Weber, Scriabin, Liszt, Mozart, Chopin and Schumann.
It's most fascinating to read the lives (and deaths) of the great composers.
Leni
Because we all know the most important personal characteristic is how a person behaves in bed in private.
He certainly had a lot of other things to be depressed about, including the early death of his mother and, IIRC, two failed marriages. In between was some absolutely luminous music. I prefer to remember the music.
" Once again I am reminded of the Viennese gadfly Karl Kraus mentioned an p. 56. To characterize Viennese gossip, he wrote "If I cross the street with a woman, I am an adulterer; if I cross it with a man, I am a homosexual; if I cross it by myself am addicted to masturbation."
I’m skeptical. You see a lot of ‘homonizing’ of historical figures nowadays to try and make it more acceptable.
Maybe you're thinking of the ballet dancer Nijinsky?
Good grief, is everybody homosexual? Sheesh!
People who are clearly not gay should publicly “come out” and drive the homosexual activists crazy.
Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality is known as much as any public figures from that time was. It’s really not even a point of conjecture.
Good grief, is everybody homosexual? Sheesh!
Tchaikovsky's homosexuality has been known since forever. Ditto Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, Benjamin Britten, Karol Szymanowski, Francis Poulenc, David Diamond, Michael Tippett, and on and on.
Borges can verify this, or you can look it up.
"What else can I say? Everyone is gay."
Camille Saint Saens apparently as well.
I’ve heard that. :)
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