Contents:
JULI CAAR, YOUNG AND GAY: A GROUNDBREAKG 1971 OPERA GETS REVIVED FOR A NEW ERA
When the Enunters mic seri Pasana asked for an opera, Harrison was at a loss for a subject until his partner, Bill Colvig, proposed 1969 that he explore a gay subject. The rult was what may well have been the first overtly male gay opera history, plete wh a love affair between the teenage Juli Caar, as an emissary om Rome, and Nies, the kg of distant Bhynia, on the south shore of the Black Sea. It even had a gay y, picted wh opera was a ttimony to Harrison and Colvig’s then-new love, speculat Yuval Sharon, the Los Angel Philharmonic’s artist-llaborator, stage director of “Young Caar” and lear of the performance group the Indtry.
In 1987, the Portland Gay Men’s Chos Oregon missned a new versn (wh assistance om another beloved Californian, the patron Betty Freeman). In honour of LGBTQIA+ history month, Ancient History alumni Ollie Burns tak a closer look at the social, polil, and cultural implitns of homosexualy ancient Rome. Trigger Warng: sexual vlence, homophobia, paedophilia, nudy.
The prentatn and perceptn of homosexualy the Roman world was vastly different than how is today, and giv an example of how homosexualy has been libly lked wh munitns of power and thory antiquy. The Lat language has no word for eher heterosexual or homosexual, and stead partners a sexual relatnship would be prented as eher active, synonymo wh masculy, or passive and therefore, feme, regardls of the genr of the dividuals volved. Freeborn male Romans had the civil liberty to do as they pleased when me to sexual activy, and as such, the ncept of a Roman man engagg homosexual sex was no way ntroversial or taboo to the Romans, as long as fell wh certa parameters.