Born On This Day- April 15th...Renaissance Man, Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

In his childhood, the Husband was so entranced by a book on the life of Leonardo da Vinci that he taught himself to write in "mirror", that can only be read by holding it up to a reflection, a skill practiced by the often secretive Leonardo. The Husband can still do the mirror writing to this day & is himself, a bit of a Renaissance man.

Self Portrait

Leonardo da Vinci was denied an education & a profession because he was born out of wedlock in 1452. One of the few professions for the son of a middle class notary & a peasant girl was art. Despite the stigma of being a bastard Leonardo mastered anatomy, architecture, botany, cartography, engineering, mathematics, music, poetry, science, sculpture, sketching, &… painting. He used to sleep 2 hours every day. A left-handed dyslexic, he tried to paint with both of his hands. He was a loner, but also adopted a child which he raised with extra care. He destroyed most of his work.

When he was 24, Leonardo & 3 young companions were arrested on the charge of sodomy. No witnesses appeared against them & eventually the charges were dropped. Although he was not convicted, the accusation may have tormented Leonardo throughout his life. It seems clear to me that Leonardo was homosexual. He kept his private life very private, but throughout his entire life, Leonardo surrounded himself with attractive men. His relationship with the beautiful curly haired Gian Giacomo de' Caprotti lasted 20 years. In the last 10 years of Leonardo's life, his companion was the much younger Francesco Melzi, who would later serve as the executor of Leonardo’s estate.


Leonardo possessed the greatest mind of the Italian Renaissance. He wanted to know the workings of what he saw in nature. his inventions & scientific studies were centuries ahead of his time. He was the first person to ingunuity, & intellectual inquiringness show him to be the epitome of the Renaissance spirit. 6 centuries later, the world is still in awe.

Born On This Day- August 25th... The Great Leonard Bernstein

In the beautiful New England spring of 1972, I appeared as The Street Singer in a production of The Three Penny Opera at Harvard. At the same time Leonard Bernstein was giving a series of lectures at his Alama Mater named – The Unanswered Question. Always absorbing & frequently brilliant, Leonard Bernstein's The Unanswered Question were comprehensible & persuasive discussions of music's history & forms, with particular emphasis modern music. They addressed the average intelligent listener who is not musically trained but wants to know what makes music work & what is meant, for example, by "tonal" and "atonal." It required some concentration, but Bernstein, a superb teacher, kept technical terms to a minimum, illustrating what he meant with musical examples. I was lucky enough to go to two of the six lectures, being invited by the maestro after he thrillingly talked to me & gave me advice about singing Kurt Weill’s songs in Three Penny when he attended a dress rehearsal. I already understood his place in music history, especially for his music for West Side Story, On The Town & Wonderful Town & Candide. I didn’t expect to find him so totally sexy & hot, but then, I often find men who are talented to be sexy. I loved Jewish men, especially charismatic, one of a kind major 20th century talents, with a flowing mane of hair & the ability to look me in the eye & touch my hand while telling me what he thought I was getting right & what I was missing in my performance. I went home that night simply swooning & with dreams of being the lover of one of history’s most important musical figures.

He may well be more famous among the general public than any other conductor before or since. He wrote 3 symphonies, 2 operas, 5 musicals, a mass, & numerous other pieces. Throughout the 1960s, 70s & 80s, Leonard Bernstein was undoubtedly the most visible proponent of classical music in American culture. Through his outgoing personality & resourceful uses of the media, particularly television, Bernstein introduced 'highbrow' culture into the homes of middle America, while also defending rock & roll as 'real' music & supporting radical causes. In spite of Bernstein's speaking out for unpopular causes- he was outspoken on civil rights & Vietnam, he was, for much of his career, unwilling to risk exposure of his homosexuality. Indeed, the social mores of the 1950s & 1960s meant that revealing his homosexuality would undoubtedly have destroyed the celebrity & influence he had attained. Later in life & after the death of his wife in 1978, Bernstein became quite open about his sexuality. He left behind an unprecedented amount of recordings & videos, leaving us with a legacy to be experienced for generations to come, & the memory of one 19 year old boy who melted at having been in his presence. My crush on him never diminished.


Patti Lupone & Kristen Chenoweth doing Glitter & Be Gay from Candide.