Being Gay in the World of Mad, Mad Men: What It Was Really Like

It’s the latter, the trim and easy-to-use edition, that makes its New York City debut this week at the Manhattan School of Music in three performances (4/25-29).  Steven Osgood conducts and stage direction is by Jay Lesenger.

Corigliano and Hoffman in 2011

There’s tons of places online to learn more about the origins and reception of “Ghosts.”  Something I didn’t find readily was the tidbit that the original title was “A Figaro for Antonia.” John and Bill did innumerable talks around Manhattan in the months leading up to the premiere and I recall one of them saying that whenever they said that the name of the opera, the response was “What?!”

So they came up with a new and much better title, while the opera within the opera bears that vowel-heavy original name.  And the rest is opera history.

It was written in 1988 and first heard in concert by the Cummings Ensemble at the Knitting Factory and PS 122 in New York.  The world premiere staged version takes place this month in the Washington DC area thanks to Urban Arias, a two-year old company that’s also commissioned the piece.  Six performances run April 13-22.

The music is by Conrad Cummings, whose past operas include “Photo Op” (1989) and “The Golden Gate”  (2006), and lyrics by Michael Korie whose many libretto include “Harvey Milk” (one of several projects with Stewart Wallace) and “The Grapes of Wrath” (with Ricky Ian Gorden).  Korie’s work in musicals includes the Tony Award-nominated musical “Grey Gardens” and the forth-coming adaptation of the film “Far From Heaven,” which will be workshoped and performed this summer at the Williamstown Theater Festival.

Taking positions in the cast are baritone Jesse Blumberg, tenor Vale Rideout, and soprano Amedee Moore.

Following is the synopsis of “Positions 1956.”  Now take your places, everybody!

Part One, “Marriage Manual,” is set in a bedroom over the first few months of the Bride and Groom’s marriage as they explore positions and begin to learn about each other. Source material includes titles like “How to Please Your Husband,” and “You and Your Sex Life: an Illustrated Guide for Men.”

Part Two, “Physique,” is set in a gym where the Groom goes to a Trainer to receive a course in physical fitness based on exercises from 1950s men’s physique magazines. Think 98-pound weaklings, Charles Atlas, and titles like “Physique and Delinquency.”

Part Three, “Social Dancing,” is set in a dance studio where the Bride and Groom learn how to dance from an Instructor using methods from “How to Dance” manuals of the 1950s. Think Arthur Murray’s famous “footprints” – and imagine where those “steps” might lead if a third party were involved.

Last summer his sister Sarah Ashman Gillespie launched a beautiful tribute site, Howard Ashman: Part of His World. It’s a place for fans to learn and explore but it also seems to be an outlet for Sarah to rediscovered who her brother was.

I can’t carry on Howard’s singular talent as a writer and director but I can carry on other things he taught me. Like love for the arts and the sharing of ideas and enthusiasms. His enormous energy motivated so many of us to find our own creative selves. And that’s what I hope to continue here.

She’s been writing regular blog posts with family photos and personal reflections, such as Leisure Suit Christmas and How I Learned My Brother Was Gay.  You go, little sister!

Perhaps it’s that bravery, that hold-your-chin-up attitude, which allows Koestenbaum the courage to delve so deeply into the shame, guilt and suffering of others.

“Humiliation” is the latest book by Koestenbaum who will appear on Thursday at the University of Albany in an afternoon seminar and evening reading, sponsored by the New York State Writers’ Institute.  As the title suggests, his new book explores the humiliating moments of a wide range of historical figures, up to and including the sex scandals of American politicians.  He also throws in plenty of moments from his own life.

Degradation may seem like a surprising departure for the author whose six previous books of nonfiction include highly personal, almost loving biographies of Andy Warhol and Jackie Kennedy Onassis (“Jackie Under My Skin”) two of the great, glittering icons of the 20th century.

Yet in a recent discussion Koestenbaum points to the pivotal importance of a shaky self-image in the lives of the first lady and the pop artist.  He also suggests that it’s the most troubled part of their lives that made them appealing topics to him.

“Jackie was a queen and a mistress of ceremonies and very imperial in manner.  But then there was the bad press she received for defection (to marry Aristotle Onassis) and the footage that weirdly records the bloodied suit,” says Koestenbaum. “And Andy Warhol was spat upon as a child and always an outsider.  His sense of having a bad body, bad skin, bad hair gave him a profound sense of being untouchable. That was the M.O. of his mature career.”

Okay, everybody hurts.  But is Koestenbaum, who’s a distinguished professor of English at the City University of New York, just an intellectual version of a tabloid reporter, spinning out books of scandal for the high brow set?

Actually, Koestenbaum elevates the discussion by regularly making statements like “Humiliation is the kiln through which the human soul passes and receives a burnishing and consolidation.”

Using the psychological term abrecation – the release of a previously repressed emotion through reliving the experience that caused it – he goes on to explain humiliation’s deeper significance.

“By repeating a traumatic episode, you release it’s toxicity, you convert it.  It’s repeating the acts of shame to get cheerful,” he explains. “Writing the book had an abreactive effect for me, and before that so did teaching a course called ‘Humiliation.’ We were all in a good mood and didn’t talk about personal things.  But it was a personal subject and we realized that one could be very cheerful discussing humiliation if you had a supportive group.”

Being an author isn’t easy on the psyche though.  Whatever healing may have come to Koestenbaum through the writing about humiliation was at least somewhat jeopardized by the publishing process, fraught with editing, interviews and especially reviews.

“Publishing itself is so weird and elating and depressing, such a mixed bag,” he says.

Besides his non-fiction books, Koestenbaum has also written five books of poetry and a novel.  He made his first mark on the cultural map in 1993 with “The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire.” A brash and daring treatise on the passionate connection between gay men and opera, it includes chapters on “opera queens,” record collecting, and the cult of soprano Maria Callas.

Humiliation, it seems, is a thread that’s laced throughout classical music, especially the worship of opera divas, and the gorgeous prolonged deaths, night after night, of Violetta, Mimi and all the other tragic female characters.

Koestenbuam says that he just didn’t use the h-word in writing “The Queens Throat,” thinking it too extreme at the time.

“There’s a deeply felt connection between the shame of a flawed public performance and the mercilessly rigorous and perfectionist standards in classical music interpretation,” he says.

Perhaps the only realm where there are higher, even more unattainable standards is that of masculinity.

“Many gay men’s narrative is about failing in masculinity. But everyone does. It’s impossible to ever succeed at masculinity,” states the 53-year old author.  “As a gay man, I have a complex, very particular understanding of the melodrama of masculinity.  As someone my age, it’s taken for granted there’s shame in the package. That’s why a straight man could not have written this book.”

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

“If you’re doing a program about sex, you can hardly avoid a piece by me,” says David Del Tredici.  The American Modern Ensemble certainly didn’t take a pass in putting together their “XXX” concert on Sunday (5/1) at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn.  Along with Del Tredici, the program also features music of Jacob Druckman, Robert Paterson, John Cage and Glenn Crytzer.

Del Tredici will be represented with “Wondrous the Merge,” a 20-minute piece for string quartet and baritone.  Because of the text, by the late gay poet James Broughton, the 2003 premiere almost didn’t happen, but chopping out about two-thirds of the poem allowed things to proceed. Thus, Sunday’s performance is of the “uncensored” version. Robert Frankenberry will be the narrator and singer.

“Wondrous the Merge” belongs to an ongoing body of works explicitly about gay life that Del Tredici began around 2000.  “Gay Life” is, in fact, the title of an orchestral song cycle, premiered by the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas in spring 2001, that pretty much opened the new and prodigious chapter in Del Tredici’s musical output.

“I’ve created a body of ‘Alice’ works and now a body of gay works,” said Del Tredici in a recent discussion.

Not everything in the gay series is vocal music.  There are lots of piano works, including “Ballad in Lavender,” “S/M Ballad” and “Mandango.” But just as Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” writings sparked Del Tredici’s famous, neo-Romantic forays into wonderland, gay poetry, from Rumi to Ginsberg, has inspired a substantial new body of song literature.  The gayish cycles include “Gay Life,” “My Favorite Penis Poems,” “Love Addiction,” “A Field Manual,” to poems of Edward Field, and “Brother” a set of eight songs that have been dramatized and performed to acclaim by the performance artist John Kelly.

With Allen Ginsberg

“Wondrous the Merge” fits somewhere in between the instrumental and vocal categories.  The bulk of the piece is for string quartet with narration.  In the finale, the narrator bursts into song.  It’s the singing that’s really about the sex, but ironically only the singing – no narration – happened at the controversial June 2002 premiere.

“We told them it had a gay text and they were fine with that,” recalls Del Tredici. “But a week before the concert, they said that it’s not acceptable to our people.”

The commissioning ensemble was the Elements String Quartet (since disbanded according to Del Tredici) with support from the Koussevitzky Foundation.  The objecting party was the venue, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in southeastern Michigan.  According to its web site, a triple whammy of local churches – Catholic, Jewish and Protestant – established and support the festival.  Del Tredici never learned from where or who the real objections came, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what were the offending aspects of his work.

The poem “Wondrous the Merge” is Broughton’s autobiographical recounting of how, at age 61, he was seduced by a male student to ultimately leave a wife and life of respectability.

He said I held the key to his existence
He said he knew when he first saw me
that I was the reason for his birth…

This is preposterous I said
I have a wife in the suburbs
I have mortgages  children  in-laws…

Are you mad? I said. You are half my age
Are you frightened of your fate?  said He

At Beck’s Motel on the 7th of April
we went to bed for three days
disheveled the king size sheets
never changed the Do Not Disturb
ate only the fruits of discovery
drank semen and laughter and sweat

“It’s the right-wing’s worst nightmare,” says Del Tredici. “They knew enough not to say it was because it was gay. Instead it was ‘we have children at our concerts and it has words we don’t want them to hear.’ But it actually has no dirty words.”

On the switch from spoken to sung words, Del Tredici continues, “There are some things only song can do and that’s express sexual joy.  He talks into an orgasm, ‘Yes yes yes,’ and I made it burst into song at that point.  Then there’s talking again and they’re off into the sunset, happily ever after.”

I severed my respectabilities
and bought a yellow mobile home
in an unlikely neighborhood
He moved in his toaster  his camera
and his eagerness to become
my courier  seed-carrier  and consort

Above all he brought the flying carpet
that upholsters his boundless embrace
Year after year he takes me soaring
out to the ecstacies of the cosmos
that await all beings in love

One day we shall not bother to return

 

James Broughton (1913-1999)

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

David Leisner and David Del Tredici confront the Facts of Life

CD review: Del Tredici’s midnight ride

Pianist

Some years back de Mare put together a whole evening of theatrics at the piano and titled it “Playing Myself.” (I liked the original title, “Playing with myself,” but that was vetoed by management and venues.)  The show involved talking, singing, tap dancing and more, all from the piano bench.

De Mare’s new disc “Speak!” (Innova) is his first CD collection of such works.  Encountering the five talk-and-play pieces from a purely sonic perspective, much of the wonder of the parlor tricks gets lost.  There’s a greater emphasis on the substance of the compositions, which isn’t uniformly strong from piece to piece.  What’s more, de Mare’s voice – breaths and hums, whispers, shouts and yelps – sometimes isn’t clear without a very close listen.  Of course it would have gone against the conception of the pieces to have the narrative tracks recorded or mixed separately.

The best and most substantial pieces are the opening, Jerom Kitzke’s “Sunflower Sutra” to texts by Allen Ginsberg, and the closing, de Mare’s second recording of Rzewski’s “De Profundis.”  A reworking for piano of Laurie Anderson’s “Statue of Liberty” has de Mare singing. It’s brief and lovely, with the keyboard writing managing to convey her signature electronic haze.  Derek Bermel’s “Fetch” is a riff on fragments of Bach and sundry other throw away bits. Will Eno’s text tries to be chatty and irreverent. Maybe it works in concert, but it’s kind of annoying to encounter on disc.  “Urban March” by Meredith Monk (and transcribed by de Mare) is less than three minutes of undulating piano chords with whiffs of de Mare humming.

Rodney Sharman‘s “The Garden,” to texts of Peter Eliot Weiss, involves both speaking and singing.  It’s totally charming and has got an explicitly gay subject. Somehow it jumps back and forth between playful little boys learning to play and kiss, and randy adults at a men’s club, as well as lessons learned on the knee of grandma.  Here’s an excerpt from the notes by Jason Victor Serinus:

“I’ve written a lot of music for Tony,” says Sharman. “This was written at his request with a gay theme. I didn’t want to write about AIDS – I’d already written three memorial pieces – or about coming out. Tony said he was so relieved, because those are the standard gay literary subjects that are done constantly.

“When I approached Weiss, he suggested a piece about the politics of men kissing men, and the possibility of a perfect kiss. Tony wanted the section where he could whisper ‘Come on, kiss me, kiss me’ under his breath. It’s like a spoken cadenza, as it were.”

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Happy 80th Birthday Stephen Sondheim

Anthony de Mare, Power Pianist

He died in Williston Vermont on May 30 at age 76.

Make my grave shape of heart so like a flower be free aired and handsome felt.
Grave root pillow, tung up from grave & wigle at blown up clowd.
Ear turnes close to underlayer of green felt moss & sound
of rain dribble thru this layer
down to the roots that will tickle my ear.
Hay grave, my toes need cutting so file away in sound curve or
Garbage grave, way above my head, blood will soon
trickle into my ear –
no choice but the grave, so cat & sheep are daisey turned.
Train will tug my grave, my breath hueing gentil vapor between weel & track
So kitten string & ball, jumpe over this mound so gently & cutely
So my toe can curl & become a snail & go curiousely on its  way.

1958 NYC

The above comes from CLEAN ASSHOLE POEMS & SMILING VEGETABLE SONGS (1978, City Lights Books), which I found (first edition!) in a used porn shop in the Castro a few years ago.  Here’s the copy from the back cover:

First harvest of 1958-1978 eternal decades’ poetry by Peter Orlovsky, born July 8, 1933, in the vanished Women’s Infirmary in Lower East Side N.Y. Sometime ambulance Attendant, farmer, house cleaner, skilkscreen handyman, newsboy, Postal Clerk & instructor at Kerouac School of Poetics, he was discharged from Military after telling government psychiatrist, “An army is an army against love.” witness of the ’50s San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, he was portrayed by Jack Kerouac as hospital nurse saint Simon Darlovsky among Desolation Angels, learned driving speech from Neal Cassady & taught heart in return, partook of psychedelic revolution a pillar of strength with Timothy Leary & Charles Olson, companioned Kerouac & William Burroughs in Tanger, was one of the first American poets to make modern passage to India in early ’60s accompanying Gary Snyder & Allen Ginsbrg, studied Sarod, Banjo & Guitar, read poetry in Chicago & at Harvard Columbia Princeton Yale & New York’s St. Marks Poetry Project, survived Speed & Junk Hells, sang in jail at anti-war protest & political convention occasions, was published in historic Beatitude & Don Allen Anthologies of New American Poetry, played Self in early underground Robert Frank Movies, travelled with Dylan Rolling Thunder Review, farmed solitary upstate New York ten years organic & herculean, fed and nursed decades of poetry families. An experienced Buddhist sitter & Vajrayana meditation practitioner, his Dharma name is “Ocean of Generosity.” After 20 years of shy genius this first poem book’s published on earth.

Allen Ginsberg
Aug. 27, 1978

Above shot is from the upcoming film “Howl” featuring Aaron Tveit as Orlovsky and James Franco as Ginsberg.

But the issue actually has something worth spending a bit of time and thought on – a 22-page spread called “80 American Classics” celebrating “the spectrum of queer talent who taught us who we are.

Along with Tennessee Williams, Robert Maplethorpe, and Andy Warhol among others, there’s a revealing look into the early love affair between Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.

And there are actually a few classical music items.  Well, make that two.

Number 12 is a 100-word blurb on Aaron Copland by Nico Muhly (who is on the verge of getting more than a little over exposed).

And Number 65 is “The Diaries of Ned Rorem,” written by, of all people, John Waters.  Actually “written by” is probably too strong a description. After Waters’ name it says “As told to Out,” which suggests that he spent about 5 minutes rambling on the phone.  Whatever. I love what he’s got to say, and here’s a bit of it:

“(Rorem’s) music is beautiful, but it’s his Paris and New York diaries that changed how I thought gay people were supposed to act.  He was elitist, but incredibly smart and hilariously snobby… I always say old chickens make good soup, but with him I’d say old smart chickens make even better soup.”  Who knew Ned Rorem inspired John Waters?!

I don’t want to fault OUT for being OUT, but in the Rorem/Waters spirit of being fussy, smart and snobby, I’m going to critique the “American Classics” feature a bit and then offer to fill out it with some more high-brow types.

What’s annoying is the randomness of it. The jumping around between artistic fields is fine, as is the variety of lengths of copy for the different items.  But some “classics” are just artists, listed by name, while others are works of art.  Examples:

No. 14. “Sweeney Todd.”

No. 15. Philip Johnson’s Glass House.

No. 17. Merce Cuningham.

No. 19 Paul Lyne. (But not Paul Lyne’s Center Square”)

No. 24. “West Side Story.” (And not Leonard Bernstein in his own right??!!)

No. 46. Elizabeth Bishop.

No. 48. “Pink Narcissus” (James Bidgood).

No. 58. “The Radiant Baby” (Keith Haring).

No. 61. Alvin Ailey.

And on so.  Strange editing.

No surprise that there are some inclusions from the world of popular culture, including No. 25. “Strange Fruit,” No. 52. “Harold and Maude,” and No. 75. Divine. But some things are just not old enough to be classics, like No. 63. “Sex and the City,” No. 64. “Voguing” and No. 67. “Love Shack.”

And just plain weird are the following:

No. 28. Rolling Stone Magazine (Maybe Out’s parent company Here Publishing is just kissing up and hoping for a buyout savior in the form of Jann Wenner)

No. 29.  The Jeapardy! Theme Song (so what if Merve Griffin made a zillion off of it)

No. 53.  The Career of Tom Cruise (though it’s always nice to see him dancing in his underwear from “Risky Business”)

And then there’s the long article within an article that’s No. 59 Tom Brown (the designer who made Pee Wee Herman suits chic, briefly), which seems like a feature they had hanging around and decided to throw in. Likewise, the long hymn of praise to No. 69 Rostam Batmanglij, the 20-something gay member of a band called Vampire Weekend.

Still, it’s fun to pour over it and pick it apart and nice to know there are some folks at OUT who know something culture.

Now a few additions:

TED SHAWN

Who led the way for all male dancers to frolick.

GIAN CARLO MENOTTI.

He may have become an angry old queen, but he wrote American opera like nobody else.

JOHN CORIGLIANO’S SYMPHONY NO. 1 “OF RAGE & REMEMBRANCE”

The highest summit of musical works about AIDS, it’s manic, in your face and when stuffed shirts and closet cases face it in concert they have to sit through it.

DAVID DEL TREDICI’S  ALICE IN WONDERLAND CYCLE

Just like his inspiration Lewis Carroll, DDT disguises a world of sexual longing and erotic explosions beneath a harmless children’s fantasy.

“THE MOTHER OF US ALL”

Building on their avant garde background, Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson showed that an expatriate butch lesbian poet and corn-fed mid-Western sissy were the perfect pair to depict the American struggle for rights and deliver it with color, flair and humor.

LOU HARRISON

Because he turned to the east for musical inspiration but listened to his heart for beauty.

GORE VIDAL

With “The City and the Pillar” he created the gay American novel  and later went on to become our nation’s queer conscious.

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