Джордж Майкл посвятил хит «Jesus To A Child» своему возлюбленному Ансельмо Фелеппе, скончавшемуся от ВИЧ

Anselmo Feleppa, the man who inspired George’s Michael hit, “Jesus To A Child”, would have turned 70 last month. Born August 21, 1956, in Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he was a Brazilian fashion designer and stylist. He died March 26, 1993, aged 36, from HIV-related health complications. Your dose of fabulosi-TEA Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer. Michael was so consumed by grief at the passing of his lover that he found it impossible to work for several months. When he returned to the studio, he created his third solo album, Older (1996). It was widely regarded at the time as his most mature and contemplative offering. He later said the songs were inspired by Feleppa, but particularly the lead single, “Jesus To A Child”. Michael premiered the song at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Berlin in November 1994. It was released as a single in January 1996. At the time, Michael was still very much in the closet. Although he talked about losing a friend, he held back from commenting on the precise nature of his relationship with Feleppa. Still, many fans — particularly his gay ones — could guess. His love for Feleppa was evident in the lyrics. “Loveless and cold/With your last breath/You saved my soul/You smiled at me/Like Jesus to a child,” sings Michael. “Well, I’ve been loved/So I know just what love is/And the lover that I kissed/Is always by my side.” Toward the beginning of the atmospheric video, two shirtless young men hold hands through the frames of separate wooden boxes. In February 1996, writing in The Advocate, Barry Walters said, “Michael compares the emotion of a now-deceased lover to that of the Lord, who was, after all, a man. The tone is intensely elegiac, and it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to consider this a love song to a boyfriend who has died of AIDS.” The song went to number one in the UK and Australia, and number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Coming out and opening up Michael was forced out in 1998 when he was arrested in a sting operation in a Beverly Hills park restroom. Afterward, he became much more open and vocal about his personal life. It allowed him to open up more about his relationship with Feleppa. Brought up in a Greek Cypriot-British household in the suburbs of London in the 1970s, Michael struggled with his sexuality in the early years of his career. Wham! rocketed to fame in the UK in 1982, when Michael was still just 19. Major success in the US followed a couple of years later. At the time, there were barely any out pop stars, and coming out would have undoubtedly impacted Michael’s career. The pressure to remain in the closet was intense. Michael struggled to allow himself to explore relationships with men. Meeting in Rio That all changed when he met Feleppa at the Rock in Rio concert in 1991. Michael was 27 at the time. He vividly recalled the encounter when talking to Gay Times in 2007. “I didn’t meet him at the concert. I realised about a day after we’d met that he was in the crowd. He’d told me he was there. And I realised that I’d seen him and had to avoid him ‘cause he was staring so intently at me – and he was really cute. I put that together later.” “It’s quite a sweet thing really, but when I saw him the next day in the lobby of the hotel I made the association. The bizarre thing was, I saw him with this girl and presumed he was straight. I thought, ‘Lucky cow!’ And he looked at me as we were leaving the hotel to drive to this island 200 miles away. “I’d fallen in love by then twice – with the wrong people, really – but I already knew that feeling where you kind of click, before I even said a word to them. And it happened in the lobby when I looked at him. And I remember getting on the bus and thinking, ‘That’s really odd, I got that little click – I’ll never see him again. Why would that happen?” “Three days after we arrived, he’d made his way onto the island, through one of the promoter’s children or something. “And he’d followed me for 200 miles – that would send me running for the hills normally. I remember freaking out when he got to the hotel ‘cause I thought, ‘F*ck, that’s why I was going to see him again.’ We had about two or three days on the island… and we got it together. And within days I outed myself to just about everybody in that circle of friends, work colleagues and stuff. It was very immediate.” Los Angeles and HIV diagnosis Michael then flew to Los Angeles. James Gavin, writing in his biography, George Michael: A Life, said, “He told [manager] Rob Kahane to get Feleppa there as swiftly as possible.” The couple stayed in Kahane’s Santa Barbara house, which afforded them privacy. “Both men had resisted getting tested for HIV,” Gavin writes. “But in the late fall of 1991, Feleppa told Michael he felt sick.” The Brazilian flew back home to see his family. It was there that he learned he had HIV. At the time, both men knew the diagnosis was a likely death sentence. Michael paid for him to see the best doctors in California. In 1993, Feleppa returned to Brazil for carnival season. His health was deteriorating, and he ended up in hospital. Michael didn’t visit, fearful that doing so might be leaked to the press. Feleppa received a blood transfusion, but this triggered a brain hemorrhage. He died at the age of 36. Michael did not attend the funeral, but he flew down a few days later to privately meet with Feleppa’s mother. Feleppa’s death also prompted Michael to come out to his own parents. His mother was supportive. His father—initially—took the news harder. Michael, who died on Christmas Day 2016 at the age of 53, later described Feleppa as “the most beautiful, kindhearted, angelic person I’ve ever met, which is sometimes hard for my partners since his death because you can’t rival a ghost.” “Jesus To A Child” stands as a testament to their love. Helping children Following his passing, several charities revealed how Michael had secretly supported them while alive. One of these was the UK-based Childline, which offers counseling for children in need. Its patron, British TV presenter Esther Rantzen, revealed Michael had donated all his proceeds from “Jesus To A Child” to the charity. “George helped us to reach out to hundreds of thousands of children through his generosity,” she told The Mirror. ”I met him a couple of times, he approached us, rather than us going cap in hand to him, but it was an intensely personal gift. He didn’t want it to be known.” George Michael on the big screen Fans of George Michael will be interested to know that a new big-screen concert movie, filmed in Paris in 1988, is heading to theater screens this winter. George Michael: The Faith Tour debuts on November 4 and hits screens in the US and Canada on December 11. A trailer premiered on YouTube today. Related* George Michael’s iconic 2011 tweet is once again going viral for Pride Month Almost a decade after his passing, many still mourn the loss of George Michael. Linda Perry reveals the raw, reluctant truth behind writing Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” Check out Linda Perry’s recently released version of “Beautiful”. Sign up for the Queerty newsletter to stay on top of the hottest stories in LGBTQ+ entertainment, politics, and culture.