Benjamin Britten is outed by the NY Times

The composer was a man of his times, private and even prudish about his sexual arrangements. While he dealt with homosexual themes in several operas, he never expressed homoeroticism or encouraged nudity on stage. The undercurrent was there to be understood without explicit amplification, which would have horrified the composer.

The New York Times, of course, knows better.

This week it removed four critics in an effort to provide ‘trusted hguides’ to ‘new generations’.

Here’s how that might work, in a feature-review of Billy Budd from Aix-en-Provence:

(Director Ted) Huffman treats the queerness of the ship’s homosocial environment as a given. It’s in the subtext of Melville’s book and other tales of the sea, like “Redburn” and “Moby-Dick.” In one scene of the novella, Billy spills his soup in a way that has been interpreted as a stylized ejaculation. Passing by, Claggart playfully taps him and says: “Handsomely done, my lad! And handsome is as handsome did it, too!”

“For me, the larger allegory is not only about queerness and how it exists within a society that wants to crush it, but also the effect of that crushing energy on three queer people,” Huffman said. “Watching this piece, you understand in all the coding that these are three queer stories, and you’re watching three responses to pressure.”

At the small Théâtre du Jeu de Paume in Aix, the production was erotically charged from the start. The men onstage were generally young and textbook attractive, dressed in white tank tops and pants with a canvas blankness to which they added accessories like sailors’ jackets and wigs. (The costume designs are by Huffman.) They changed clothes in full view, and were sometimes wearing nothing but boxers…. 

The report is by Joshua Barone.

picture: Festival Aix-en-Provence

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