Michelangelo and Tommaso

This play is the telling of a 32-year-long love story between two men, which has been suppressed by the Catholic Church for 500 years.Tommaso de Cavalieri, 17-year-old Roman nobleman and artistic aspirant, was acclaimed as the most beautiful youth in Italy. He met the lonely Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti in 1532 during a Pope's dinner.An immediate passion between them led to the inspiration for Michelangelo's most magnificent love sonnets, enflamed letters, and the drawings of the "Rape of Ganymede," "Tityos," and the "Fall of Phaeton." Tommaso modeled for the only life-sized portrait Michel ever drew, now mysteriously disappeared, the "Victory" statue, and, ironically, the figure of the angry Christ in "The Last Judgment."The story of their passionate relationship is told by Tommaso's lifetime friend, the Papal bastard, Enrico Cardinal Farnese.Although the age when they lived was the sunset of the glorious Roman Renaissance, when "Greek" love was more or less the norm, the couple faced the chasms of intergenerational and religious differences. Michel very closely followed medieval Catholicism, while Tommaso was a secular worshipper of Zeus.The couple also faced Michel's penchant for very young men, Tommaso's hidden vein of violence, a vicious blackmailing scheme, and Pope Paul III's command that