Rather than simply acting like the secrecy of high-profile gay men in Manhattan was a random phenomenon, a story such as Woolfe’s could just as well have addressed the music press’s past complicity in making homosexuality a secret in the first place. Menotti, and that there was nothing more to say but goodbye.Ĭloseting rarely happens in a vacuum it requires a hostile culture of gay suppression and mechanisms like the popular media to thrive.

Schippers retorted in another newspaper that big names had become irksome to Mr. Schippers had become too costly a performer for the festival to afford, a “Marron glacé,” rather than a menu staple. Menotti told an Italian newspaper that Mr. The Menotti connection, which resulted in their founding of the Spoleto Festival in 1958, continued until 1976, when composer and conductor fell out. But the real news, at least according to a splashy profile in the New York Times, is not the new maestro’s musicianship it’s his sexual orientation. Following the sudden departure of conductor James Levine last year under allegations of sexual misconduct, Québécois conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin (who had previously been tapped to be Levine’s replacement in 2020) assumes the podium this month with a production of the Debussy rarity Pelléas et Mélisande. The Metropolitan Opera hasn’t had a new music director-arguably NYC’s most prestigious classical music gig-in four decades. This post is part of Outward, Slate’s home for coverage of LGBTQ life, thought, and culture.

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Metropolitan opera conductor