Pears & Blass... A Pair Of Birthdays On June 22nd

"Style is primarily a matter of instinct.”

William Ralph Blass was a very handsome man, who happened to be gay. He produced clothes for many renowned women including Jacqueline Kennedy, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Pat Buckley, Brooke Astor, Nancy Kissinger, Happy Rockefeller, Gloria Vanderbilt, Jessye Norman, Barbra Streisand, & Barbara Walters.

Bill Blass's life epitomised the Gatsby-esque American dream. Along with Oscar de la Renta, Blass was the American designer who most successfully brought together the roles of couturier & social butterfly.

At one point in my life I thought that escorting society dames to parties, lunches & events might just be the ticket for me. I had my eye on Diana Vreeland in the mid-1970s. Blass was one of the most successful 'walkers' ever. He was an indefatigable partygoer, showing up with some of the richest women in Manhattan at every party, gallery opening & hip restaurant. He not only loved the world of glamour, big money, high profile & style, but understood how to dress it, which is why his company was so successful for more than 30 years.

He was one of the founder members of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). He was the first to receive the CFDA Perignon Award for Humanitarian leadership beyond fashion. He donated the $25,000 prize to the AIDS care centre of New York Hospital. He was also a major donor to Gay Men's Health Crisis at a time when well known people were silent about AIDS. Bill Blass died of cancer aged 79.

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Pears on the left & Britten on the right.

For 40 years, Peter Pears was the lover/partner of composer Benjamin Britten, who wrote the leading roles in many of his operas & song for Pears.Their partnership is important for the vast body of music & recordings it produced, & because many homosexual subjects figured in their work. Because Opera is just not gay enough.

Pears became a leading lyric tenor of the Sadler's Wells Opera, where he developed an extensive repertoire, but Pears's greatest triumph in this company, was his creation of the title role of the tortured & homosexual outcast in Britten's Peter Grimes (1945).

For the next 30+ years, Pears created many operatic roles that Britten wrote for him, including the title role in Albert Herring (1947), Captain Vere in Billy Budd (1951), Essex in Gloriana (1953), Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw (1954), Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960), the Madwoman in Curlew River (1964), Nebuchadnezzar in The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966), the Tempter in The Prodigal Son (1968), Sir Philip Wingrave in Owen Wingrave (1971), & Aschenbach in Death in Venice (1973).

In 1974, Pears made, at last, his debut at the Metropolitan Opera Company, New York, in the 1st American performance of Death in Venice. I wonder if my friend Will, the esteemed theatre & opera designer was in the house?

Even after Britten's death in 1976, Pears continued his singing career until nearly the age of 70. He spent the remainder of his life teaching & administering the Britten-Pears School. Pears was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1977, & died on April 3, 1986. He is buried next to Britten.

Born On This Day- November 22nd... Composer Benjamin Britten

I do not have a driving passion for “serious” music, symphonic work, coral pieces or what is blanketed as “classical music. I am interested in Benjamin Britten, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, because his story is also one of the great loves stories of the last 100 years & because he was working during a golden age of gay, mostly American & British compser who all knew & fed off of each others artistic energy: Aaaron Copeland, Virgil Thomas, Paul Bowles, Samual Barber, & Leonard Bernstein. Britten composed a series of masterpieces ranging from works for solo piano, oboe & cello, to pieces for chamber ensemble, to concertos & compositions for orchestras both tiny & monumental, even a full ballet. His vocal works encompass folksong arrangements to several song cycles setting poetry by Michelangelo, William Blake, W.H. Auden among others, to the great choral masterpiece, War Requiem. The form for which he is best known is opera: Peter Grimes is arguably one of the most powerful musical dramas of the last century, & he wrote at least 5 other landmark operas that are a part of the major Opera companies' repertory.

The extraordinary tenor- Peter Pears, was Britten's musical partner, life partner & muse. Britten wrote many of his greatest vocal works, from his song cycles to his finest operas, specifically for Pears & his unique & expressive voice. Pears seems a man who has found the acceptance that eluded Britten; in a way, the always present yearning that is a major defining element of Britten's music (he does yearning better than any composer since the also gay Tchaikovsky) is resolved in Pears's comfort with his life & Britten's death. Pears & Britten were understandably reticent to talk being gay, they had lived in a Britain where sodomy carried a career & life destroying prison sentence. It was an era where they were forced to hide their love.


Benjamin Britten visited North America in the spring 1939, & found more than he hoped for. He came from Britain to perform & present some of his compositions in Canada & the USA. It was planned as a relatively short trip, but ended up lasting several years. War broke out in Europe while he was away, & he not to come back to England. Britten was 26 years old, & he would have had to enlist in the military in some form (he returned to England in 1942 & claimed conscientious objector status).


During this visit, Britten & his traveling companion, the tenor Peter Pears, started the love affair that lasted 40+ years, until Britten died in 1976. There is a hotel room in Grand Rapids, MI, that is a place of pilgrimage for gay musicians, where they supposedly consummated their union. Pears wrote later: "I shall never forget a certain night in Grand Rapid. Ich liebe dich, io t’amo, jeg elske dyg, je t’aime, in fact, my little white-thighed beauty, I’m terribly in love with you." How mushy, but Britten was a Brit, & of course his legs were probably very white.

Pears with Britten at the piano

The Britten/ Pears had gay “marriage” that gave life to some of the most magnificent music of the century. Homosexuality was altogether prohibited in England at the time. Still, in a letter to Pears in 1943, Britten writes to a traveling Pears: "Think of all the other married couples who are separated for ever so much longer!" When Britten died, a decade after the repeal of the buggery laws, Queen Elizabeth sent condolences to Pears under the thinly veiled guise of sharing sympathy with "a representative of all who had worked with Lord Britten."


This prohibition of homosexuality is partly responsible for Britten's monument of the 20th century music, the opera Peter Grimes, whose conception started 2 years into the Britten/Pears relationship. It's during the US trip that George Crabbe's poem- The Borough, was pointed out to Britten, & became the inspiration for the opera. The libretto gives us a Grimes not as a murderer, but an outsider, alienated from the life of his fishing village which rejects him, as Britten's homosexuality had isolated him growing up in the conservative seaside.

Britten was recognized as a gifted composer all through his life. He won the only scholarship offered by the Royal College of Music in 1930, at 17. The following year he met W. H. Auden with whom he collaborated on the song cycle Our Hunting Fathers, radical both in politics & musical direction, & other works. Of more lasting importance was his meeting in 1936 with the tenor Peter Pears, who was to become his musical collaborator & inspiration as well as the partner with whom he was to spend the rest of his life. In early 1939, the pair followed Auden to the USA. There Britten composed Paul Bunyan, his 1st opera, with a libretto by Auden, as well as the 1st of many song cycles for Pears.


The Britten/Pears returned to England in 1942, Britten completing the choral works- Hymn to Saint Cecilia, his last collaboration with Auden, & A Ceremony of Carols during the long voyage. He had already begun work on his opera Peter Grimes, & the premiere at Sadler's Wells in 1945 was his greatest success so far. Britten was encountering opposition from sectors of the English musical establishment & he withdrew from the London scene, founding the English Opera Group in 1947 & the Aldeburgh Festival the following year, partly to showcase his own works.


Peter Grimes marked the start of a series of operas, including Billy Budd (1951) & The Turn of the Screw (1954). These operas share common themes, with the theme of the 'outsider' particularly prevalent. Most feature such a character, excluded or misunderstood by society.


In the last decade of his life, Britten suffered from  bad health & depression. His late works became progressively more sparse in texture,including the opera- Death in Venice (1973),


Having previously refused a knighthood, Britten accepted a life peerage in July 1976 as Baron Britten, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk. A few months later he died of heart failure at his house in Aldeburgh. He is buried in the churchyard there.

Jeff Buckley doing Britten...