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JT GAY
It feels, a way, olr than is, a geo relic of a perd when gay sire uld achieve only plete exprsn or had to be ncealed altogether. Melville’s John Claggart, the master-at-arms whose obssn wh the handsome young sailor Billy turns stctive, is the archetypal self-hatg gay villa. “Billy Budd, Sailor” was first published 1924, by which time gay inty was utly emergg as a topic lerature and cricism.
” Vere observ that Billy is “a fe specimen of the gen homo, who the nu might have posed for a statue of young Adam before the Fall, ” and tends to promote the sailor to a posn “that would more equently brg him unr his own observatn. Although the poser never openly clared himself gay, he was known to be sharg his life wh the tenor Peter Pears.
Forster, who had wrten his own tale of gay love, the form of the novel “Mrice. ” The rult of their llaboratn uld plsibly be scribed as the first gay opera, although the text stays close to Melville’s sly, direct formulatns. Given that gay sex was crimalized the Uned Kgdom 1951, is difficult to image how much further they uld have admirers of Brten’s mic, myself clud, have hated to embrace “Billy Budd, ” which alternat uneasily between hearty naval spectacle and attempts at psychologil revelatn.