Homoeroticism and Opera
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From a review of Britten’s Children by John Bridcut.
There is absolutely no doubt that there was often a sexual component to Britten’s attraction, but it was one kept rigorously in check, and the resulting tension fed into the work. It seems altogether appropriate that Britten’s final opera should have been Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann’s autobiographical account of a writer’s obsession with a young boy, a Dionysian lapse from a life of Apollonian self-discipline.
Only an old-fashioned schoolboy
