ROCK star Freddie Mercury had a passionate affair with ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev, according to a book out today. / http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn24328 /
The highly intimate account draws on letters written by Nureyev in which he admitted to the secret liaison.
The letters are full of lurid descriptions of Nureyev’s homosexual encounters across the world — both casual and longer lasting.
Mostly they contain nicknames or acronyms for his many lovers. But after describing Mercury as “Eddie”, he is then fully named.
Once, according to Nureyev, he cancelled all rehearsals and asked his theatre management for a week’s leave so that he could spend time with Mercury.
“When it comes to homosexual love, lies are inevitable,” he wrote.
On another occasion, he recalled how a frantic Mercury left a message for him after not being able to contact him by phone: “Called you. Will call again in ten minutes. Lover.”
The instant Nureyev came through the door, the phone rang again. It was Mercury — and it turned out he was calling from a plane en route to another liaison.
“At last!” said the Mercury. “These unbearable 12 hours between two continents kill me, Rudy.”
“What’s happened?” asked Nureyev.
“Nothing,” replied the singer. “It’s just that I can’t stand it any more without you.
"Usual thing… I can’t eat or drink. I’m on my way to you. My Boeing is crossing Mexico at the moment.”
Nureyev said there was a kiss down the phone — and then silence.
Teased
He wrote how Mercury would turn up unannounced at dawn, rushing into his room undressing on the way — and carrying a bottle of Camus brandy.
"He is really very loud, switching on immediately all the electrical devices in the kitchen.
“Oh, I love his arrivals at my place in Kew Gardens!”
The dancer chided Mercury for his “multi-hour phone conversations from the other side of the ocean” — which Nureyev had to pay for.
But he added: “Who can blame us? We’re spending our fortunes without investing into pensions funds, medical insurance and the rest of what other people always must do.
“We both foresee our inevitable future.”
There is a suggestion that Nureyev was close to Mercury at the time of his death — even that he was present.
It is in this passage that, for the first time, the rock star is named.
Nureyev wrote: “He wanted to die alone in his house in London — which was alien to him. It rained and I was crying at the hall of Great Freddie Mercury. He died quietly without much pain.
"And I knew it was about two years or less until I would meet there.”
The book — Rudy Nureyev Without Make-up — will go on sale in St Petersburg, today.
This carries out Nureyev’s dying wish that his correspondence should be made public first in his native country.
The book, written by Yuri Matthew Ryuntyu, is based mainly on 49 letters apparently sent by Nureyev to Patrick White, Australia’s Nobel Prize-winning author who died in 1990.
Ryuntyu was born in Russia but has lived most of his life in Australia.
He claimed yesterday that he obtained the letters from White with Nureyev’s permission.
They outline intimate details of the dancer’s many affairs and the difficult times faced by gays both in Russia and in the West. The millionaire star also tells of the terrible loneliness which forced him into the streets of big cities in search of someone to share his bed with.
Ryuntyu said: “In all I got more than 115 letters from White and Nureyev himself.”
Many were repetitious and he drew on less than half of these in preparing his manuscript.
“I believe some of the letters would fetch ;6,000 on the open market but this collection will go to my daughter as a wedding gift,” he said.
He added: “There is no doubt in my mind that there was a close sexual relationship between Nureyev and Mercury.”
While the pair appeared publicly together, for example at an open air music festival in Barcelona in 1988, they successfully drew a veil over their relationship.
Ryuntyu said it was exceptionally hard to convince Nureyev that the letters should be posthumously published.
He recalled White saying that the dancer was like a girl whose mood would change five times an hour.
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