Fruit Punch:
Young Caesar: A Puppet Opera by Lou Harrison

On December 25, 1974, as a Christmas special, the Fruit Punch Collective presented a recording of the 1971 world premiere performance of Lou Harrison’s gay-oriented opera, “Young Caesar”. The story of the opera explores the meeting, and purported subsequent love affair, between the young Julius Caesar and King Nicomedes IV of Bithynia. In addition to desiring to write an opera with a homosexual theme, Harrison was also attracted to the story about Caesar and Nicomedes because it represented the meeting between East and West. Building upon that theme the musical score calls for a variety of Eastern instruments including gamelan, and rather than using real actors, puppets and shadow figures were utilized instead, much as they are in Indonesia. The homoerotic nature of the story was made quite evident in such scenes as the ballet of puppet phalli, a point that needed to be advertised in advance so as to prevent some from thinking this was a puppet show meant for children. At the end of this program Lou Harrison and his partner and collaborator William Colvig are interviewed by members of the Fruit Punch Collective in which the opera, Harrison’s experiences as a gay man growing up in San Francisco, and as his interest in different tuning systems are all discussed.