Opera
Classical music is an important component of Western culture to which glbt people have contributed significantly.
Opera, an eclectic synthesis of voice, drama, music, costume, visual arts and spectacle, has played an integral role in queer culture since its development in seventeenth century Venice.
Highly respected British tenor Sir Peter Pears was the life partner of composer Benjamin Britten, who wrote leading roles in many of his operas for him.
One of the first openly gay composers, Francis Poulenc became one of the most thoughtful composers of serious music in the twentieth century.
One of France's most distinguished composers, Maurice Ravel projected a public identity as a cultured dandy, a dapper man-about-town of refined taste and sensibility.
American composer Ned Rorem is one of the most accomplished and prolific composers of art songs in the world, but his musical and literary endeavors extend far beyond this specialized field.
One of the most highly honored French figures of his day, composer Camille Saint-Saëns reputedly declared--perhaps sardonically--that he was not a homosexual but a pederast.
British director John Schlesinger has been a significant force in introducing homosexual themes into mainstream British and American films.
An important voice in children's literature over the past half century, Maurice Sendak writes and illustrates books that both acknowledge the fears faced by children and celebrate the imagination with which they cope with them.
Set and costume design for stage and film are fields that have attracted a large number of talented gay men and lesbians.
The most important female composer in early twentieth-century English music, Dame Ethel Smyth enjoyed a class privilege that allowed her to be an unapologetic lesbian.
American composer Conrad Susa is best known for his operas and choral music, some of which are informed by his experience as a gay man.
One of the greatest composers in the history of music, Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky inspired a cult of gay admirers who detected in his work themes of forbidden love.
Critic and composer Virgil Thomson was a pioneer in creating a specifically American form of classical music that is at once "serious" yet whimsically sardonic.
English composer Sir Michael Tippett became one of the most respected figures in British classical music despite his pacifism, unabashed homosexuality, and incorporation of homosexual themes in his operas.
The arc of the film career of Luchino Visconti, the most contradictory and varied of the major Italian filmmakers, mirrors his increasing openness about his homosexuality.
Concerned with the music, theoretical writings, political ideas, and aesthetics of the German composer Richard Wagner, Wagnerism had a profound influence on late nineteenth-century European culture, including the expression of same-sex desire.
Controversial Italian director Franco Zeffirelli has won both acclaim and derision for his visually extravagant opera, stage, and film productions, while also provoking the ire of many gay men and lesbians for his anti-gay religious positions.
Cross-Dressing
Transsexuals of Brazil
Hijras
Frederick the Great
Butch-Femme
Milk, Harvey
Women's Liberation Movement