Chopin's interest in men airbrushed from history, programme claims

Journalist says he has found overt homoeroticism in Polish composer's letters

Frederic Chopin's archivists and biographers have for centuries turned a deliberate blind eye to the composer's homoerotic letters in order to make the Polish national icon conform to conservative norms, it has been alleged.

Chopin's Men, a two-hour radio programme that aired on Swiss public broadcaster SRF's arts channel, argues that the composer's letters have been at times deliberately mistranslated, rumours of affairs with women exaggerated, and hints at an apparent interest in cottaging", or looking for sexual partners in public toilets, simply ignored.