The queer encyclopedia of music, dance, and musical theater - Claude J. Summers

Aficionados of music, dance, opera, and musical theater will relish this new volume by the scholars of GLBTQ featuring over 200 articles showcasing composers, singers, musicians, dancers, and choreographers across eras and styles. Read about Hildegard of Bingen, whose Symphonia expressed both spiritual and physical desire for the Virgin Mary, and George Frideric Handel, who not only created roles for castrati but was behind the Venetian opera's preoccupation with gender ambiguity. Discover Alban Berg's Lulu, opera's first openly lesbian character. And don't forget Kiss Me Kate, the hit 1948 Broadway musical: written by Cole Porter, married, though openly gay; produced by a gay man; directed by John C. Wilson, Nol Coward's ex-lover; and featuring Harold Lang, who had affairs with Leonard Bernstein and Gore Vidal. No single volume has ever achieved the breadth of this scholarly, yet eminently readable compendium, which includes: overviews of genres, such as opera, ballet, cabaret, modern dance, rock, disco, and hip-hop; discussions of topics like glam rock, music videos, and AIDS activism; and fascinating biographical entries on hundreds of figures such as Peter Tchaikovsky, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Diaghilev, Bessie Smith, Aaron Copland, Stephen Sondheim, Alvin Ailey, Rufus Wainwright, and Ani DiFranco.