Role models of greatness.

Here you will discover the back stories of kings, titans of industry, stellar athletes, giants of the entertainment field, scientists, politicians, artists and heroes – all of them gay or bisexual men. If their lives can serve as role models to young men who have been bullied or taught to think less of themselves for their sexual orientation, all the better. The sexual orientation of those featured here did not stand in the way of their achievements.

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

(Updated since the original 2021 post) 

A native of Montreal, Canada, Yannick Nézet-Séguin (Yah-NEEK neh-ZAY Say-GAN, b. 1975, 48 years old) was the conducting coach for Bradley Cooper, who portrayed Leonard Bernstein in the 2023 movie MAESTRO. Yannick also recorded the movie's soundtrack. Your blogger is stunned that he could find the time, since he teaches conducting at the Curtis Institute and leads three orchestras and a world-famous opera company. His is a superstar conductor on the level of Gustavo Dudamel (also in his forties).

Here's a rundown. He was first named Music Director of The Philadelphia Orchestra in 2012, and subsequent contract extensions assure this position through the 2029-30 season. This makes him the first openly gay conductor of one of the "big five" orchestras in the United States, and on very sure footing indeed. 

In 2016 the Metropolitan Opera (NYC) announced that Nézet-Séguin would assume the title of Music Director beginning with the 2020-21 season, but following the termination of James Levine for sexual misconduct, he took the title two years early, beginning with the 2018-19 season.

Since 2000 Mr. Nézet-Séguin has also been Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montreal), with whom he holds a lifetime contract.

He is a regular guest conductor of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He will appear this July with the COE as pianist and conductor in Baden-Baden, Germany. As well, he was  Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra from 2008-2018; today he holds the title of Ehredirigent (honorary conductor) of that organization (RPO).

 
Mr. Nézet-Séguin’s partner of two decades, Pierre Tourville (shown in sunglasses behind Yannick), is the assistant principal violist of the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montreal), and they appear everywhere together. When the conductor was fêted by the city of Philadelphia some years ago, Pierre Tourville was also introduced at every stop – amazing, considering the tortured history of gay conductors. After all, Leonard Bernstein (gay) had married a woman at the advice of famed conductor Dmitri Mitropoulos, and both those men led closeted lives.

In a New York Times profile by Daniel Wakin, it was reported that “Nézet-Séguin is what the orchestra world is desperate for: a young, charismatic maestro who can win the respect, even affection, of grizzled orchestra veterans, the enthusiasm of audiences and the praise of critics, which has for him been pretty exalted.”

The 48-year-old conductor’s relative youth is reflected in his flouting of certain traditions – he frequently leads from the podium in a business suit and tie (Carnegie Hall), and he’s partial to tight V-neck sweaters and skinny jeans. Many times he conducts without a baton, in the style of Mitropoulos. While on vacation in Tahiti he acquired a turtle tattoo on his right shoulder, and his compact five-foot-five frame bursts with energy.




Again from Mr. Wakin’s NYT profile: “He seemed stunned by the ovation” (conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in Verdi’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall). “Applause from his inner circle greeted him in the crowded dressing room. Attendants broke open bottles of sparkling wine. Mr. Nézet-Séguin embraced his companion, Mr. Tourville, looked him in the eyes and said, ‘Oui?’

‘Oui,’ Mr. Tourville answered. With an air of coronation, orchestra and Carnegie Hall executives toasted Mr. Nézet-Séguin. “

The conductor’s honors include a prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award, Canada’s highly coveted National Arts Centre Award and the Prix Denise-Pelletier, the highest distinction for the arts in Quebec, awarded by the Quebec government.  In 2011, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Quebec in Montreal and was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2012.

Even as he ages, Mr. Nézet-Séguin has not outgrown his overtly gay traits. He bleaches his hair blond, paints his nails, wears necklaces and bracelets and has pierced ears. Not to mention his shoulder tattoo. He listens to the music of Bad Bunny (an ally and of self-professed "fluid" sexuality) when he works out, and enjoys a penchant for jazz. Your blogger was pleased to learn that his favorite singer of all time was Sarah Vaughan, as is mine (when she died in 1990, my answering machine was full of condolences from sympathetic friends and colleagues).

Oh. Need I mention that orchestras and critics wax rhapsodic?

Official web site: https://yannicknezetseguin.com/en/

A recent photo by Mark Sommerfeld:



Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Matt Dallas

 

Whatever happened to Matt Dallas?

For starters, he’s starring in Shoulder Dance (2023), an LGBTQ comedy / drama / romance movie, and has a smaller role in another film, Every Breath She Takes (2023 thriller / drama), capping a four-year dry spell that began in 2019. Both films can be streamed on Prime Video.

Even so, he’s still best known for his lead role in 3 seasons of Kyle XY (American Family network 2006-2009, 43 episodes, sci-fi / fantasy / drama). He played the title role of a test tube baby born without a belly button. He was in his mid-twenties at the time the series aired.

But that’s not why he’s included on this blog. At 41 years old today, he is openly gay, married to male musician Blue Hamilton (m. 2015) and the father of two adopted children. In 2006, however Perez Hilton outed him, and Matt subsequently denied the allegations on Howard Stern’s show. It was not a convincing effort, but understandable, since Kyle XY was aimed at a young audience on a "family" network. Matt did not come out publicly until 2013.

Matt’s career has encompassed music videos, many TV episode appearances and more than 26 films. It’s good to have him back.

Monday, February 26, 2024

Couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga

UPDATED POST: Your blogger first learned of Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895-1972) from a pamphlet at the San Sebastian (Spain) tourist office. In a list of famous people who had made San Sebastian their home, he was in the second position, right behind the Queen of Spain. My female traveling companion, speaking in reverent tones, informed me that he is regarded as one of the greatest couturiers of the twentieth century.

Counted among his clients were the de Rothschilds, Bunny Mellon, Helena Rubinstein, the Duchess of Windsor, Countess Mona Bismark, Doris Duke, Marella Agnelli and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Jackie upset John F. Kennedy for buying Balenciaga's ultra expensive creations while he was President, because he feared that the American public might think the purchases too lavish; her haute couture bills were discreetly paid by her father-in-law, Joseph Kennedy. While Dior dressed the rich, Balenciaga dressed the very rich. During the 1950s, it was said that a woman “graduated” from Dior to Balenciaga.

Balenciaga, who had quit school to go to work for a local tailor at age 13, opened his first shop in San Sebastián, Spain, at age 19, and by the age of 24 he had his own couture house, which later expanded to branches in Madrid and Barcelona. All three were called Eisa, after his seamstress mother. He learned every aspect of the couture business. While apprenticed to the San Sebastián tailor, he learned the skill of cutting, an art few dress designers possess.

At seventeen he went to Biarritz, across the border, to learn the French language and their clothes-making techniques. By the age of eighteen, he was learning the women’s wear trade back in San Sebastián, in a luxury shop, Louvre, where he became adept at fitting ladies and finding gowns for their personal requirements. His clients loved him and followed him when he opened his own fashion house in the Basque capital at age 24. Among his clients was the Spanish Queen Mother, Maria Cristina, for whom San Sebastián’s great luxury hotel is named. His business was run with the help of his sister, brother and other relatives, and was very much a family firm, though on a substantial scale; 250 people worked in the Madrid house alone, plus an additional 100 or so in Barcelona.


The Spanish royal family and the aristocracy wore his designs, but when the Spanish Civil War forced him to close his stores in 1931, he fled first to London, then to Paris in 1936, eventually opening a couture house on Avenue George V in 1937. His success was immediate. Customers risked their safety to travel to Europe during World War II to see Balenciaga's designs.

Below: A Balenciaga design from 1951.


It was in Paris that he met the lover of his life, Vladzio Zawrorowski d'Attainville, who was also his business associate. At the time he partnered with Cristóbal, Vladzio was a Franco-Russian milliner. Balenciaga was devastated when he died in 1948, to the point that he considered closing down his business. While Balenciaga had affairs with other men after Vladzio's death, he remained an intensely private man, rarely socializing.

Several designers who worked for Balenciaga would go on to open their own successful couture houses, notably Oscar de la Renta, Emanuel Ungaro and Hubert de Givenchy. Balenciaga’s influence on these men cannot be overstated
.

His greatest period of innovation and influence was from just after WW II until he closed his couture house in 1968, four years before his death. His “sack dress” created a sensation in 1957 and was even parodied on an episode of “I Love Lucy”. Unlike other couture houses, Balenciaga never produced a ready-to-wear line: "I will not prostitute my talent." Tapping the deep roots of his Spanish heritage, Balenciaga found inspiration in flamenco and Velázquez paintings, clerical vestments and bullfighters’ boleros. Later, in designs that re-envisioned the female silhouette with gestures that flouted the traditional waistline, he created his unfitted middy blouse and tunic dress, the barrel-line jacket and balloon dress. In 1960 Balenciaga received the Légion d’honneur for services to the French fashion industry.



When Balenciaga died in his native Spain in 1972, Women’s Wear Daily declared, “The King is Dead”. He died a very rich man, with houses and apartments in Paris, at La Reynerie near Orléans, in Madrid, in Barcelona, and in Iguelda in his native Basque country. Although his couture house remained dormant from 1968 until 1986, in 1992, for the summer Olympic Games, the rejuvenated House of Balenciaga designed the French team's clothes to give them a more sophisticated look.

The Balenciaga name is best known to young people today as the label for men's and women's shoes and sought-after handbags and accessories. Balenciaga, headquartered in Paris, is now owned by the French-based Kering Company, which includes Gucci, YSL, Bottega Veneta and other luxury brands. In recent times Kim Kardashian has been the Balenciaga brand's official ambassador. Even more controversial was a 2022 holiday ad campaign featuring children holding plush teddy bears embellished with BDSM accessories. Public backlash was swift, and the outcome was an unnecessary blemish on the reputation of a fashion house once at the very pinnacle of respectability.