QUEERWARSAW
Grand Theatre and Polish National Opera [Teatr Wielki – Opera Narodowa]
Above everything to be not a man – but a human being, who is a man only in the background – to not identify with manliness, to not want that… Only when I am able to extract myself from manliness in this way, firmly and openly, its rule over me will lose its claw and I will be able to talk about many untellable things.
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And in a letter to Juan Carlos Gomez he wrote: Just remember: I am not homosexual, but I practice it sometimes, when I feel like it.
Some credible insight is also provided by the vision of the crowd of young intellectuals and writers surrounding Gombrowicz in Buenos Aires cafés. How far is it from farmhand boys from his family estate before the war! So far and yet so close! Gombrowicz can be remembered in Warsaw in Chocimska Street (right next to Unii Lubelskiej Square) where he lived between 1934 and 1939 in the building at number 35. There are still houses in Próżna Street (number 7) and Wspólna Street (number 1), which his father acquired as an extra source of income for the whole family after the passing away of “the head of the family”. Until recently there was at Próżna Street a plaque saying: “Property of Gombrowicz family”. See also: ▶ Andrzejewski Jerzy, ▶ Mycielski Zygmunt, ▶ Unii Lubelskiej Square
Grand Theatre and Polish National Opera [Teatr Wielki – Opera Narodowa] 1 Teatralny Square
The building belonging to the Grand Theatre and Polish National Opera is already visible from the Piłsudskiego Square and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It was designed by Antonio Corazzi and erected in the years 1825-1833 to be a temple of theatrical and opera arts in Warsaw. In recent years the competition from other commercial theatres that manage without the founding of the state or city has caused the Grand Theatre to come alive only for great operas that became its specialty. Despite the undisputably provincial status of the Warsaw Opera, as it is common for this type of institution, it attracts the queer male folk, making its foyer a place for intellectually inclined gays to socialize in. Lately, increasingly bold gay motifs have started to appear in the National Opera’s spectacles. It is after all a noticeable tendency in European opera – today, the notions present since the beginning of this so very queer type of art are
49. Grand Theatre
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