Broadway has its groove back, said Tonys host Ariana DeBose at an exuberant ceremony seeking to illustrate just that sentiment.

In the Lakeview Neighborhood, the Legacy Walk, a series of ten 25-foot pylons, recognizes influential figures across genders, races, and fields.

Reynaldo Hahn’s world was the Paris salon, where he reigned supreme with his songs and went about in his full‐length opera cape.

In the early 1990s, the famed composer and librettist Gian Carlo Menotti came to Chicago as the guest for a black-tie event for Chicago Opera Theater. “This could be fun!,” I thought. A rare opportunity to spend time with a world-famous musician and composer. Who could pass up a chance like this? I volunteered.

“I wanted to encourage young emerging LGBTQ+ composers to write pieces that tell their story in an authentic way… This concert series is both a celebration of how far we have come and how far we still have to go.”

This is the third major presentation of City Opera’s LGBTQ series following Peter Eotvos’ Angels in America in 2017 and Charles Wuorinen’s Brokeback Mountain last year.

To celebrate Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday, WFMT and the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus presented a pop-up performance of “Somewhere” from the composer’s beloved musical West Side Story. The event was broadcast live from the Legacy Walk in Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood.

Can you imagine a world without the music of Handel, Tchaikovsky, or Britten? These great composers of the past are just a few of many important musical figures who did not identify as heterosexual.