Queer Festival: Against the Grain

Vanessa Chartrand conductor
Samuel Mariño sopranista
Hans Werner Henze: Symphony No. 1
Claude Vivier: Lonely Child
Intermission
Ethel Smyth: Serenade in D
Being openly gay required courage and sacrifice from composers in years past. Hans Werner Henze (1926–2012) left Germany at a young age due to prejudice and spent the rest of his life in Italy. First Symphony was completed before his move in 1947, but Henze completely revised it in 1963. The Canadian Claude Vivier (1948–1983) grew up in a Catholic orphanage but was forced to leave the seminary because of his homosexuality. He eventually settled in Paris, where he was stabbed to death by a homophobic serial killer. Lonely Child for soprano – in this case, the renowned sopranista Samuel Mariño – is Vivier’s best-known work. Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) made no secret of her relationships with women, such as the writer Virginia Woolf, but she ended up in prison for fighting for women’s suffrage.