Stravinsky Had A Same-Sex Affair
Is nothing sacre? Among the many jaw-dropping revelations in 89-year-old Robert Craft‘s new TLS piece about Stravinsky’s 100-year-old ballet score “The Rite of Spring” is the news that the hyperactively heterosexual Stravinsky, during the rehearsals for “Firebird,” had a gay affair: “In the middle of the ‘Firebird’ rehearsals, Ravel introduced the Russian to his friend, the epicene Maurice Delage, who became Stravinsky’s lover as well as the surrogate parent for his young children during the composer’s frequent absences…. During [the composition of ‘The Rite of Spring], Delage was intimate in Stravinsky’s life, even sharing his home in Clarens; a letter from him informs the unindentified recipient that ‘Delage is with me every day’. His affection for Stravinsky differed from Ravel’s. Delage’s letters to Stravinsky are embellished with ‘kisses and hugs’. When Delage refers to Stravinsky being ‘in the arms of that fiend Diaghilev’, the reader may understand it literally and wonder about those early years where Diaghilev treated Stravinsky as a minion on the way up. The Delage connection terminated with the ‘Rite’ and Stravinsky’s resumption of both his family life in Switzerland and his hyperactive heterosexual philandering.”
