Sapphic Opera Singers & Lesbian Classical Musicians Throughout History

... resident opera singer at the Paris Opera and the Opéra du Quai au Foin in Brussels. The role of Clorinde in Tancrède was composed specifically for her contralto range by André Campra, in 1702.

An example of her many shenanigans: on dumping her swordsman beau, La Maupin seduced a local merchant's daughter. Desperate to separate the two, the merchant sent his daughter to a convent. Undeterred La Maupin joined the convent herself, and started hooking up with her lover. Shortly into their convent stay, an elderly nun died - bizarrely La Maupin stole the body and placed it in her lover's bed! She then set the whole convent on fire and the two lovers fled. Either La Maupin tired of the girl, or the girl tired of life as a fugitive, the girl returned to her family in Marseilles, upon which she told her tale.

A tribunal was convened and La Maupin (in her absence) was convicted of body-snatching, kidnapping a nun, and arson against a convent! The sentence was death by burning. As a fugitive, she approached her former lover, the Comte d’Armagnac, the Grand Squire of France, and through his influence, convinced Louis XIV to have her death sentence annulled. So, La Maupin's shenanigans continued!

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... The case received much tabloid press and it is believed Amy Poulter committed suicide soon after. Arabella's fame, however, continued to go from strength to strength as the muse of Henry Purcell and Dr John Blow who wrote operas inspired by her magnificent soprano. Forgive me... I am a bit confused... Arabella never married and it is believed she had affairs with Aphra Behn (an English playwright), Nell Gwyn (an English actress and mistress of Charles II) and numerous women courtiers.

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... captivated with her that he presented her with a solid silver suit of armor for her performance as Romeo in Bellini's Romeo and Juliet. Vestvali was the first female Hamlet actress ever (in travesti), in America.

Vestvali "never emphasised her Uranian nature," Her "inseparable friend" was the German actress Elise Lund.

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... a piece of polyphonic music) and singing Brahms Schumann, Mendelssohn. In 1889, she performed in London and at the Crystal Palace in Beethoven's Choral Symphony. She also toured Australia (1891) and, South Africa (1895) with Sir Charles Hallé (an Anglo-German pianist and conductor, and founder of The Hallé orchestra), Between 1904 and 1912, she taught at the Royal Manchester College of Music.

While at the Musikhochschule in Berlin, Fillu met Eugenie Schumann who became her long time partner. Eugenie became a well respected German pianist and author. They are buried along side each other in Gsteig Kirchhof Wilderswil, Bern, Switzerland.

Fillu's letters to Eugenie have been published: Mit 1000 Küssen Deine Fillu. Briefe der Sängerin Marie Fillunger an Eugenie Schumann 1875–93, (2002), edited by Eva Rieger with the collaboration of Rosemary Hilmar.

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... in 1916 and in 1917, the role of Silla in the première of Hans Pfitzner's Palestrina. During the the 1920s and 1930s, she regularly performed at the Bayreuth Festival

Krüger had a long-time romantic relationship with Olympic equestrian sportswoman Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille.

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... Sigrid's voice was celebrated for "the richness of its tone, its flexibility, its size, and its expert coloratura technique". contraltocorner.com With a remarkably wide vocal range, Sigrid, triumphed in mezzo roles such as Carmen, Amneris (Aida) and Dalila (Samson et Dalila). Her other distinguished roles included: Orfeo (Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice), Eboli (Don Carlos), Erda (Das Rheingold and Siegfried), Lady Macbeth (Macbeth), and Brangäne (Tristan und Isolde).

Sigrid's operatic debut occurred at the Stuttgart Opera in 1912, where she appeared as Carmen. During her illustrious career she performed for the Stuttgart Opera (1912), the Munich Opera (1919), the NYC Metropolitan Opera (1922) and London Covent Garden (1927). She also sang at musical festivals such as Salzburg (1931-1932) and, Bayreuth Festivals (1933-1934) and was sought after concert performer.

Sigrid was born Elisabeth EIfriede Emilie Hoffmann. On May 25, 1912 she married Baron Eugen Borisowitsch Lhwoff Onégin, a Russian pianist and composer. It transpires Baron Eugen Borisowitsch Lhwoff Onégin was... a German... stop the press! ... woman - Agnes Elizabeth Overbeck. That's seldom revealed in her bios and surely is worth a mention. Sadly, Agnes / Eugen died seven years later, in 1919 (see below).

Thereafter, Sigrid married a second time in 1920 to Dr. Fritz Penzoldt and looks like there were no further dalliances into sapphic love?

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... America to perform at the Sanders Theater, Harvard University (1939). Like most in Europe her performing career was put on hold during WW2. After WW2, she taught at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, Académie Long-Thibaud and Schola Cantorum de Paris and lectured in many conservatories around the world including Amsterdam, Buenos Aires and Rome. Her French Radio debut was in 1953 when she sang two songs by Charles Koechlin, from Opera 68: Deux mélodies for Soprano, Hymne à Vénus (Villiers de l'Isle-Adam) and Dissolution (Paul Claudel, from La connaissance de l'est).

After meeting Dutch pianist and composer Henriëtte Bosmans (see below) from 1948, Noémie was accompanied regularly by Henriëtte. They became more than a performing duo: Henriëtte wrote over 20 songs for Noémie and they stayed together until Henriëtte's death in 1952.

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... She had two daughters with the music critic Edouard Mousset but divorced him in the 1930s. During World War II, she used her mobility as a singer to provide courier services for resistance networks. In 1943, the Gestapo arrested her in Paris on suspicion of espionage.

Nelly was imprisoned in French and German prisons and transferred to Ravensbruck concentration camp (50 miles north of Berlin) on December 1, 1944. There, on Christmas Eve 1944, Nelly was ordered to sing Christmas carols in one of the Ravensbrück barracks with French prisoners. After a couple of songs a voice called out from the dark "Sing something from Madame Butterfly!". Nelly sang Un bel di vedremo, about the waiting for a loved one. The request was made by Nadine Hwang, who was the daughter of the Chinese ambassador in Spain and a Belgian mother and who had worked in Paris for and was a lover of Natalie Clifford Barney. Nadine had been imprisoned in the camp for six months. Nelly and Nadine became lovers until Nelly was taken to Mauthausen concentration camp (Upper Austria) in March 1945. A month later (April 22, 1945) Nelly was liberated by the Red Cross and later, was reunited with her children and family in Brussels. Nadine, who had been brought to safety in Malmö since April 28, 1945, went first to Paris and in 1946 to Mousset-Vos in Brussels.

Nelly resumed her singing career and worked for the Belgian National Institute for Radio Broadcasting, among others. In 1950 she emigrated to Caracas in Venezuela with her daughter Claude and Nadine. In 1969 the couple returned to Brussels and lived until Nadine died in 1972.

While in concentration camps Nelly wrote a diary and after liberation, Nadine took photographs and made home movies of their lives in Venezuela. It seems they wished their story be published in a book but looks likely that no one wished to publish it. Their astonishing story is documented in Nelly & Nadine which features excerpts of Nelly's dairies and Nadine's home movies.

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... Her professional opera debut in 1964 at the Hagen Theatre as Elisabeth in Wagner's Tannhäuser. For the next twenty years she sang lead roles at most of the world's leading opera houses including the Vienna State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin (Germany), La Monnaie (Belgium), Teatro Regio di Parma (Italy), Teatro Nacional de São Carlos (Portugal), the Royal Swedish Opera, Opéra de Montréal (Canada), the Teatro Colón (Argentina), and the Lyric Opera of Chicago (US). An amazing CV!

Some sources indicate her life partner of 24 years was American Stage director Deborah Karner.

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... - she was taken from her mother when she was three weeks old and was raised by a white baptist family. As a soprano, Deborah has performed in France, Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland and the UK and has sung at the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Summer Olympics and the 2003 Rugby World Cup in Australia.

Deborah Cheetham has written, composed and performed in two operas. Her opera Pecan Summer, is based on the 1939 Cummeragunja walk-off which was a protest by Aboriginal Australians at the Cummeragunja Mission, an Aboriginal reserve in southern New South Wales, who were unhappy with the management of the mission, living conditions and restrictions on their movement. Pecan Summer opened in Mooroopna, Victoria in 2010 and was performed by the Short Black Opera Company.

Cheetham's second opera, Parrwang Lifts the Sky is sung in English and Wadawurrung language and is based on a traditional Wadawurrung tale about a magpie, Parrwang, who hatches a plan with his new human friends Tjatjarrang (Big Sister) and Koki (Brother) to raise the sky from the ground and lift the world out of darkness. Parrwang Lifts the Sky is sung in English and Wadawurrung and preimered onlibe in 2021 as it could not be preformed in-person due to Melbourne's fourth COVID lockdown.

Deborah Cheetham has also written Australia's first requiem Eumeralla, a war requiem for peace which is sung entirely in the Gunditjmara language (an indigenous language of Western District of Victoria, Australia) and is based on the frontier wars between indigenous people of South Western Victoria and settlers between 1840–1863.

In 1997, Deborah wrote the autobiographical play White Baptist Abba Fan which tells of her experiences of coming to terms with her homosexuality and racial identity while trying to reunite with her Aboriginal family.

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... major opera houses internationally, particularly in Puccini and Verdi operas. At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, she received the award for Best Opera Recording for her performance in the Los Angeles Opera's production of The Ghosts of Versailles.

In June 2002, Racette was featured as the cover story for the Opera News magazine and requested that the magazine include her public coming-out statement and her long-term relationship with Beth Clayton.

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Clayton's awards include a William Matheus Sullivan Award.

Clayton has expressed gratitude to her long-time partner, opera soprano Patricia Racette, for not speaking publicly of their relationship for several years: "My career was just getting started, and I thought, Gosh, I don't need that adjective. It felt like extra baggage just when I was establishing myself. But now I'm very proud to embrace it." Respect on that.

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... one of the most renowned composers of sacred monophony. What is monophony? In music, monophony, consists of a melody sung by a single singer or played by a single instrument player without accompanying harmony or chords. Moreover, St. Hildegard is one of the few known composers of the Middle Ages to have written both the music and the words of chants.

Was St. Hildegard a lezza? Holy, Moly, there is some ambiguity with regard to her relationship with Richardis von Stade, a nun and apparently close confidant.

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... composed during the period between Purcell and Britten. She was also one of the key representatives of the suffragette movement in the UK.

Smyth had several passionate affairs of which most were with women including a 'a close relationship' with suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. Smyth's relationship with Violet Gordon-Woodhouse was depicted in Roger Scruton's opera, Violet (2005).

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... up until WWI and featured in the movie Hers To Hold (1943).

Scandal?: Living in India as an army-wife, Amy wrote to Laurence Hope, the poet whose words she had set to her song, for permission to publish it. Hope loved her setting, and since he was based in Delhi he suggested that they should meet. "He" turned out to be a... "she"! Laurence Hope was Adela Florence Nicolson's pen name. The rumour is that they did meet, fell instantly and passionately in love, and embarked on a brief, yet intense affair before returning to their respective husbands as propriety demanded.

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... When she was in her late teens, her first works were published – a song and a piano piece. Her works include:

• Two operas - Der Talisman (1910) & Ippolita in the Hills (1926). Both were staged in Leipzig.
• A Ballet - The Children of Lir (1920)
• Chamber music - Piano quintet (1916)
• And composed a number of songs, sometimes translated and adapted for a variety of writers' works, such as Twere Possible (Tennyson), A Lament (Shelley)...

Aged nineteen, Katharine married thirty-four-year-old barrister and former footballer Frederick Brunning Maddison, in 1883 whom she had two children with. At the age of thirty-six, in 1898, Adela made a shocking break: she decided to leave her husband and children to follow French pianist and composer Gabriel Fauré from London to Paris.

Sometime around 1906, in Paris, she met Marta Gertrud Mundt who was the editor of a Berlin socialist journal and had been a "secretary" to Winnaretta Singer (heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune). Quite soon after Adela made a "mysterious" move from Paris to Berlin where Marta had moved back to. They started a lifelong "companionship" and their friends included Radclyffe Hall and Mabel Batten.

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... Baron Eugen Borisowitsch Lhwoff-Onégin ... Hmm what to call her herein? Ella was born in Düsseldorfer Stadtkreis, Germany to Russian parents, but as a young child, she moved to England with her family and was educated at the Royal College of Music, London. She became a composer and pianist..

Among her works she wrote the stage music for Edward Craig's adaptation of Alfred de Musset's On ne badine pas avec l'amour (No Trifling with Love), which was performed in Uxbridge in 1894, a violin sonata and various songs. In the winter of 1902 - 3 she composed the incidental music for (Russian writer) Merezhkovsky's translations of Euripides' Hippolytus and Sophocles' Antigone which was performed at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg. Her orchestral music became a regular feature of Frank Winterbottom's "Symphony Concerts" in Plymouth and she conducted a performance of her Petersburg stage music in East Stonehouse at Plymouth on 21 February 1904, under the pseudonym Baroness Overbeck.

At some point she changed her pseudonym and identity to "Baron Eugene Borisovich Onégin" (also "Baron Eugene Borisovich Lhwoff-Onégin") and stated to be a grand-nephew of the Russian Grand Duke Alexei Lvov, composer of the Russian national anthem God Save the Tsar! Hmmm....

Apparently, Ella had affairs with English socialite Edith Craig and Russian poet Zinaida Hippius, who was married at the time (Merezhkovsky) - was Ella, masquerading as the Baron at that time? Circa 1912, Ella then started a relationship with Sigrid Lilly Hoffmann who she provided vocal training.... On 25 January 1913, Overbeck married Lilly Hoffmann in London under the name (and presumably identity of) Baron Onégin. For six years until her death in 1919, Ella / "The Baron" lived with Sigrid in Stuttgart, where Sigrid performed at the opera and now appeared under the stage name Sigrid Onégin.

I "throw down the gauntlet" to a scholar to enlighten us, on this mysterious tale.

You can hear a version of Ave Maria, composed by Overbeck and sung by Sigrid Onégin.

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... As a prolific composer, primarily of piano compositions, her compositions were both modern and traditional inspired by Beethoven and Mozart. In 1942, she was a co-founder of the Sonata Society which gave public concerts of contemporary music. Francine conducted many choral groups including the Choral Society of Lisbon (Canto Coral de Lisboa). Shame, I can't find any of her named works as examples.

As a lecturer, Francine lectured at various institutions, such as the Popular University, António Feliciano de Castillo Orphan's School, and the Lisbon National Conservatory and featured on radio programmes.

As a music critic she wrote for over 25 different publications including Arte, De Música, Gazeta Musical, Revue Musicale...

As an activist, she played an active role in Portuguese feminist organizations, joining the Feminine Association for Peace (Circa 1923) and the National Women's Council (1945), and was an opponent of the Estado Novo dictatorship, which ruled between 1933 and 1974.

Francine lived in a time when being gay and being an independent woman in conservative and communist Portugal was tough. It is thought she had sapphic relationships with Gabriela Monjardino Gomes (who later married), Maria Albina Cochofel and children's author Madalena Gomes

Posthumously, Francine Benoît was awarded the Portuguese Order of Liberty.

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... Aged 20, Henriëtte made her debut as a concert pianist in 1915, in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Between 1929 and 1949 she gave over 22 concerts with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and performed throughout Europe with leading conductors as Ernest Ansermet (Swiss), Pierre Monteux (French) and Willem Mengelberg (Dutch). In America, violinist Ruth Posselt performed Henriëtte's compositions with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (1940) and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1941).

Henriëtte's mother, pianist Sarah Bosmans nee Benedicts, was a Jew. During WW2 and the German occupation of the Netherlands, Henriëtte and her mother were (as were the circa 140,000 Dutch Jews in the Netherlands) under the scrutiny of the Dutch authorities. By 1942, Henriëtte was not allowed to perform on public stages in the Netherlands and had to support herself and her mother, with underground house concerts ("Black Evenings"). Her mother, aged 83, was arrested in 1944 and deported to Westerbork Transit Camp, but Henriëtte and others intervened to rescue her mother from further detention. One of her songs "became an anthem of liberation" as the war ended, and Allied soldiers arrived in the Netherlands. Henriëtte's mother survived the war but her Aunt was murdered at Auschwitz and her cousin was killed with his wife and daughter at Sobibor.

After the war, Henriëtte published her compositions and between 1949 and 1952, wrote a series of songs for her close friend, French mezzo-soprano Noémie Pérugia.

Henriëtte swung for both teams - she had relationships with both men and women, with whom she often also collaborated musically. Between 1920 – 1927 she had a relationship with Dutch cellist and conductor Frieda Belinfante who became a Dutch Resistance hero. In 1923, Frieda premiered Henriëtte' Second Cello Concerto.

Henriëtte Bosmans was knighted in the Royal Order of Orange Nassau, in 1951. Posthumously, the Society of Dutch Composers began offering a $3,500 Henriëtte Bosmans Prize from 1994, onwards. Her oeuvre is still admired and in 2020, North American musicians Leah Plave and Dan Sato made a new recording of the complete works of Bosmans for cello and piano. An extensive list of her works can be found at forbiddenmusicregained.org

FYI = The Netherlands was invaded by the German Reich on the 10 May 1940. In January 1941, the German authorities required all Jews to register themselves as Jews. A total of 159,806 persons registered, including 19,561 persons born of mixed marriages and circa 25,000 Jewish refugees who had fled from the German Reich and Nazi persecution / deportation.

Deportations of Jews from the Netherlands began in the summer of 1942. The last train left Westerbork Transit Camp for Auschwitz Concentration Camp on September 3, 1944. During these two years, the Germans and their Dutch collaborators deported some 107,000 Jews, mostly to Auschwitz and Sobibor Extermination Camp, where they were murdered. Only 5,200 Dutch Jews survived.

More than 75% of Dutch Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Source: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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...an electronic music studio at Hunter College in New York which is among the very few electronic music studios established by a woman. Relatively few of Ms. Anderson’s works were committed to record.

Her collage piece SUM (State of the Union Message) is included on the Lesbian American Composers collection (1973 Opus One).

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... "deep listening" and "sonic awareness"- sorry, way too above my head! In 1974 she collaborated with Alison Knowles (a slick American visual artist) for "Beethoven Was a Lesbian" which addressed women's outsider status in the music world.

Oliveros was openly lesbian. Her work was inspired by and deeply committed to the women’s movement.

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... Kay was a real pioneer - a pioneer of healing music, women's music and the women's spirituality movement and promoted the work of contemporary female musicians.

Kay started off composing works for flute, piano, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and choir which have been performed by ensembles, choruses and orchestras throughout the U.S., Canada and England. Check out her extensive list of musical works at kaygardner.com

With her own independent record label, Even Keel Records, she produced 17 albums – both of her own music and the work of others. In 1974, Kay and American folk singer-songwriter Alix Dobkin recorded and produced an album with explicitly lesbian-feminist lyrics Lavender Jane Loves Women.

Kay pioneered the field of sound healing and became recognised internationally, as an authority on the healing properties of music. She travelled abroad performing her works in concert, presenting keynote addresses at major sound medicine conferences, lecturing at universities, and leading workshops on the art and science of healing with sound.

Fighting for equality, in the early 1980s, Kay sued the Bangor Symphony, unsuccessfully, for sex discrimination after she had applied for a conducting position and, learned that orchestra members were asked how they felt about working with a female conductor. To make amends, in 2000, Kay was the guest conductor for a 40-member orchestra of women from the Bangor Symphony.

Her life partner was Colleen Fitzgerald who with Pamela Gross founded the women's sacred singing circle, Women With Wings, in 1993.

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... Patience and Sarah was also inspired after a lesbian opera singer, who she had a crush on, mentioned that she had trouble identifying with the hetty characters she played. In the opera wealthy and well-educated Patience, and a poor farmer's daughter Sarah, fall in love. Of course, their families prevent their leaving together...

For over 35 years, Paula M. Kimper has been a composer of opera, theatre, dance, film and song in New York City. Kimper also composed Truth, a new folk opera about Sojourner Truth, a former slave, iconic abolitionist and women’s rights pioneer.

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... Cold Mountain. Higdon has received numerous awards, including three Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Classical and a Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto.

Higdon is openly lesbian and has been with her wife for over 35 years - they met playing flute together in high school. So sweet!

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... In 1873, she became friends with the singer Marie Fillunger (Fillu), who was also studying in Berlin. The two started a romantic relationship and remained on-off together for the rest of their lives. All three are buried alongside each other in

After the First World War, Eugenie moved to Interlaken, where her sick sister Marie lived. Fillu followed shortly after and they moved together to Matten, near the Chalet of her sister Marie. Inflation ate up Eugenie's savings, so she decided to become a writer to earn money and wrote two noteworthy books; her autobiography, Erinnerungen (Memories) (1925), and a biography of her family, titled Robert Schumann (1931).

During all of her artistic life, Eugenie stood in the shadow of her mother who was the famous pianist Clara Schumann - regarded as one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era.

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... record the harpsichord, and the first to broadcast harpsichord music.

Why a "Woodhouse circus" ringmistress? In 1895, she entered into a marriage blanc (a platonic marriage) with Gordon Woodhouse. Later William Barrington (heir to the Barrington title) moved into the marital house... followed by Max Labouchere (a witty barrister) and... Dennis Tollemache! Society circles gossiped about this "Woodhouse circus". Moreover, she had a number of prominent lesbian friends. Although it is not clear how far her "friendships" went with her lesbian friends, Radclyffe Hall dedicated a book of erotic poems, The Forgotten Island, to her and Ethel Smyth gave her a copy of the life and poems of Sappho. Why? Aye!

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... her many recordings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century. She was the first person to record Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations on the harpsichord in 1933. Manuel de Falla wrote a harpsichord concerto for her, and Francis Poulenc composed his Concert champêtre for her.

Landowska hung out and performed at the cool Parisian salon of Natalie Barney. As a Jew, she was forced to flee Paris accompanied by her student and "domestic partner" Denise Restout to America when the German Army invaded France. In America, her "partner", Denise, was editor and translator of her writings on music.

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... renowned performer of the works of Claude Debussy. She subsequently taught music in Switzerland and in Rome.

Good times: Borgatti sapphic affairs included Mimì Franchetti (an Italian socialite and baroness), Lady Mackenzie (author), Winnaretta Singer (a.ka Princesse Edmond de Polignac heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune) and Romaine Brooks (painter). Brooks' painting of Renata Borgatti, au Piano marked an important transition for Brooks as it is the earliest painting of Brooks', in which a female sitter displays an androgynous style that deliberately subverts gender norms.

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Am I being presumptuous? Manziarly was one of Nadia Boulanger’s first composition pupils in Paris and remained her lifelong friend. Boulanger promoted Manziarly’s music in Paris, conducting the Triptyque pour une madone de Lorenzo d’Alessandro (1934) in her first appearance on the podium in the French capital. Boulanger also introduced her to Princesse Edmond de Polignac (Winnaretta Singer - a lezza, see above!), who commissioned several works. Boulanger composed Pour N.B as a dedication to Boulanger. Hmm?

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... thirteen at high school, and after moving to Kansas City she joined the Harlem Play-Girls in 1935. As a young woman, she married Clarence Davis, and year after joining the Harlem Play-Girls she left the group to give birth (she gave birth two other children).

In the 1940s Tiny Davis she joined the band The International Sweethearts of Rhythm. International Sweethearts of Rhythm had been formed out of a school for black orphans in Mississippi, the Piney Woods School, who trained their girls to play instruments in an effort to help financially support the school. During WW2 big bands were popular and as there was a shortage of male bands, female bands were formed. The band became so successful that it went independent and moved to Virginia, and began recruiting professional musicians, including Tiny.

The International Sweethearts of Rhythm toured with the United Service Organizations and played the Apollo Theater (New York City), the Regal Theater (Chicago), and the Howard Theater (Washington, DC). Apparently Louis Armstrong tried to poach Tiny Davis from the Sweethearts, offering her ten times the pay, but she just wouldn't leave her girls. One of her girls was the drummer, Ruby Lucas, and they became life partners for 40 years.

After the war, with the male musicians back home, bookings got harder for the Sweethearts, and they disbanded in 1948. Tiny then went on to form her own band, billed as Tiny Davis & the Hell Divers but as is was so hard for women jazz musicians to find work, she and Ruby opened their own club, in Chicago, called Tiny & Ruby's Gay Spot, guaranteeing them permanent gigs. In 1958 the city took over the property to build an expressway and she played other Chicago clubs for awhile, until arthritis side-lined her.

Check out the documentaries International Sweethearts of Rhythm: America's Hottest All-Girl Band (1987) and Tiny & Ruby: Hell Divin' Women (1988).

FYI Not only was the band The International Sweethearts of Rhythm an all-female band but the members were diverse racially black, Asian, Latina, Native American, Caucasian... Apparently when they performed in the deep south of America, the Caucasian members would have to apply dark make-up when performing to avoid violent racism or being arrested by the police as it was the time of awful racial segregation.

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... helped in the development of the Moog synthesizer. In 1968 she recorded an album Switched-On Bach of music by Johann Sebastian Bach performed on a Moog synthesizer which won her three 1969 3 Grammy Awards.

Wendy Carlos was born Walter Carlos. In the May 1979 issue of Playboy Magazine, Carlos revealed she had been living as a woman since 1968 and had undergone sex reassignment surgery in 1972.

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... stage and produce many theatrical works. Her music covers the genres of rock and neo-classical. In 1990, Lara was named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

In 1983, Lara was one of the first French celebrities to come out as openly gay via her lyrics from her daring song Autonome. Slick quote: during an interview, when asked what she looks for first in a man, she replied... "His wife".

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... a composer and composed the original score for the film L'Amour conjugal (by Benoît Barbier) and has collaborated with Chantal Akerman on her films, shorts and other works. In 2015, Wieder-Atherton was made an Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Wieder-Atherton married her long time partner French film director Chantal Akerman. Not only did they collaborate together Akerman made two films about Wieder-Atherton: Avec Sonia Wieder-Atherton (2003) in which Akerman pays tribute to her wife and À l’Est avec Sonia Wieder-Atherton (2009), which follows her wife on tour, giving a series of cello concerts across Europe.

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... concertos than any other guitarist and appeared as soloist with over 200 orchestra. Awards galore, she has won 3 Grammies and numerous international awards. Isbin is also the founding director of Juilliard School's guitar department.

Though Isbin was out since she was 18, she only came out to the World in 1994. The previous year Out Magazine approached her for an interview but her manager indicated that coming out [to the world] might affect bookings between California and New York (i.e America!). During that year k.d. lang and Melissa Etheridge came out and, they were selling triple platinum. Optmising on this, Isbin approached her manager again and, hurrah, rearranged the Out Magazine interview. Bravo to the domino effect.

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... conduct many major orchestras in Europe and America and, conducted several world premieres. She is also notable for having taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century. Awards include the Grand Officier to the Légion d'honneur the highest French order of merit and, the British OBE

It is not certain that Boulanger was a lesbian but she did frequent the more discreet salon of Princess de Polignac (Winnaretta Singer), whose lesbianism was well known. Her principal heirs were her long-time personal assistant and "close friend", Annette Dieudonné and her former student Cécile Armagnac.

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... Frieda father, Aron Belinfante, was a prominent pianist and music teacher in Amsterdam who was the first pianist to present the entire cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas during a single (in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw - one of the finest concert halls in the world due to it's superb acoustics). Aged 17, she made her debut, playing the cello at the Concertgebouw . Frieda's repertoire spanned all periods including works from the Baroque to contemporary living composers of the period. As a guest conductor, she made weekly appearances on the Dutch National Radio, and conducted orchestras across the Netherlands and in Northern Europe. In 1937, the Het Klein Orkest, a chamber orchestra, was formed which she was the artistic director and conductor, making her the first woman in Europe to be artistic director and conductor of an ongoing professional orchestral ensemble.

Despite the Netherlands being neutral, at the start of WW2, Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940. Frieda managed to hold her position at the Het Klein Orkest until 1941 but she was target for the Nazis - she was half-Jewish, and... gay. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Frieda joined a Dutch resistance group. She helped arrange hiding places for those who were sought by the Nazis and forged identity documents for people hiding from the Nazis and their collaborators. In March 1943, she helped plan an attack to blow up the Amsterdam Population Registry - to prevent the Nazis from discovering which documents were forged. The operation was declared a partial success and the explosion led to the destruction of 800,000 Jewish IDs (15% of those kept there). After many other members of the Netherlands-based gay resistance group were executed in 1943 by occupying Nazi authorities, she was driven to hide herself.

To hide from Nazi authorities: “For three months I was disguised as a man, and very successfully… I passed my mother several times … she never recognized me.”

In December 1943, Frieda escaped to Switzerland staying in a Swiss refuge camp and four years later immigrated to the United States (in 1947).

Frida had a seven year relationship (1920 – 1927) with Dutch Jewish composer Henriëtte Bosmans and in 1923, Frida premiered Henriëtte' Second Cello Concerto. The relationship dissolved when Frida got married to a flute player but the marriage only lasted five years. Thereafter, Frida stayed swung back to girls.

Incredulously, while living in America, Frida was fired, in 1962, from being the manager of Orange County’s Philharmonic (the first woman in this position) for being a lesbian. A man who coveted her position, informed the board of directors regarding her sexual orientation, and she was fired. The humiliation of being fired for her sexual orientation made Frieda sadly choose not to return to a public position, and she spent the rest of her life as a private cello teacher. How utterly unjust and robbed. Imagine the beautiful music she would have shared with the public and they would have enjoyed. And the bitterest pill... she survived Nazi persecution (and fought back) but, as such, didn't survive American homophobia.

Frieda's recorded output was sparse and poorly maintained. Though none of the pre-war recorded radio performances survive, critical reviews exist internationally that document Frieda's musical talent.

Frieda Belinfante's life is the subject of two documentaries But I Was a Girl (1998) and Willem & Frieda - Defying Nazis (2023) by Stephen Fry. Watch Frieda Belinfante's interview, for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, recorded sadly, nine months before she passed away when she was aged ninety.

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... Marin Alsop has been a music director of the Baltimore Symphony (2007 - 2021) and São Paulo State Symphony Orchestras (2012 - 2019), chief conductor of ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (2019 - ), and conducted at several music festivals (e.g. Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Ravinia Festival ...) and artist residencies. Check out marinalsop.com

Awards galore: Marin has received numerous awards including: a European Women of Achievement Award, a Classical Brit Award for Best Female Artist, and a fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a 4 time Grammy and a Emmy nominee.

Marin Alsop is also a lady of many firsts, including:

• 1989 - She was first woman to win the Koussevitzky Prize for conducting.
• 2003 - She became the first person to win both Gramophone's Artist of the Year Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society's Conductor's Award in the same year.
• 2005 - The first and only conductor to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
• 2007 - She was the first woman to be appointed music director of a major American orchestra - the Baltimore Symphony.
• 2011 - She was the first woman in its 230-year history to conduct at Teatro alla Scala, Italy.
• 2012 - The São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra performance conducted by Marin was the first Proms appearance by a Brazilian orchestra.
• 2013 - She was the first female conductor of the Last Night of The Proms.
• 2019 - She became the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra's first female chief conductor.

Bravo! Marin is openly lesbian - her long-term partner is horn player, Kristin Jurkscheit, who she met in 1990. Kristin now runs the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship.

Controversary... was the Oscar nominated movie Tár's backstory inspired by that of Marin Alsop, and she is also namechecked in the movie? To be honest I've had the DVD for a fortnight and still haven't watched it, as I'm feeling bad vibes on it. It's cos of a gut feeling - I think I will be siding with Marin Alsop who has slammed the movie, saying it offended her "as a woman... as a conductor... as a lesbian."

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... Freedom Crossing was premiered to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Mariel Cuban boat-crossing. The Mariel boatlift wasan exodus Cubans, triggered by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy, who travelled from Cuba's Mariel Harbour to America between 15 April and 31 October 1980. It is estimated that 125,000 Cubans reached Florida and there were forty-five known deaths.

Opportunities for a female conductor who also happens to be a lesbian are minuscule. Faced with going back in to the closet, Alfonso made a decision NOT to "live somewhere where I have to be closeted again". Girly Salute!

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... Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Sydney Opera House). Not only is she a choral and orchestral conductor, she is a music arranger, composer, music educator, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. her awards include: The American Prize for Choral Conducting: Excellence in Music Education Citation (2010) and The American Prize in Composition - choral music (professional division) (2015).

Since she was in her twenties Kathleen has been an out lesbian. For ten years (2000 - 2010) she served as artistic director and conductor of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus and spent 13 years fighting for same-sex marriage through turning up at rallies with choirs.

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