Opera North and Bridlington had commissioned Beached, a community opera by composer Harvey Brough with a libretto by Lee Hall to be performed in July 2011. However, the company, at the request of the Bridlington primary school whose 300 children were to perform in the opera, asked for the removal of explicit references to a gay character's sexuality from one of the scenes. Hall refused, and the opera was withdrawn.
This whole affair reminded me of the time when, back in 1997? a secondary school in Coventry took a specially selected group of black only students - from year 7 to 9 - to the Warwick Arts Centre to take part in their Harlem Renaissance events. I'd refused to have anything to do with the group because I didn't think it should have been a black only group from a mixed school.
Anyway, unbeknown to the students (and to the teachers leading the group?) the day at Warwick Arts Centre also included showing the children portions of 'Looking for Langston' - a pro-gay film by Julien Isaacs. The film is a 15 and VERY GRAPHIC. I'd watched it when it first came out and I had been shocked by it so I was appalled that the students, aged 11 to 14, without parental consent, had been exposed to this film.
I cynically wondered how things would have played out if it had been a group of white students which had been exposed to such age-inapproproate images. Luckily a year 7 girl, from my tutor group, who had been exposed to all this, just laughed away the whole thing, but was this just face-saving?
It still makes me angry, even all these years later!
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