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Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947), the youngest of 12 children of a German-Jewish father and a Venezuelan mother of Basque heritage, was a composer. conductor, music critic, diarist, theatre director and salon singer. His family moved from Venezuela to Paris when he was three years old, and it was France that would "determine and define Hahn's musical identity in later life" The city and its cultural resources were an ideal home for the precocious Hahn. Despite the Paris Conservatoire's antipathy toward child prodigies, he entered the school at age ten. Best known as a composer of songs, Hahn wrote in the French classical tradition of the mélodie. By 1894 he had written many songs about love, but his appearance of worldly sophistication masked shyness about his own feelings. It was in that year that be met Marcel Proust, three years his senior. Although neither admitted to homosexuality, it is generally believed that they became lovers. They shared a love for painting, literature, and Fauré, and often travelled together and collaborated on artistic projects. Hahn honed his writing skills during this period, becoming a leading music critic. Seldom appreciating his contemporaries, he admired artists of the past. His writing, like Proust's, was characterized by a deft skill at depicting small details. Hahn became a French citizen in 1909, volunteered for service in WWI (at age 40) and was general manager of the Cannes Casino opera house in the 1920s and '30s. Forced to leave Paris in 1940 during the Nazi occupation, he returned at the end of the war to fulfill an appointment as director of the Paris Opera, but died of a brain tumor two years later. This is the photograph of himself that Hahn, age 19/20, gave to Proust in 1894:

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The armpits are just where to start. The shirt promises what comes next ...

@WilliamM, clearly a man of discerning taste, found this piece of PERFECT for the Pecs and Nips thread. He's already been re-posted in the Armpits thread. I'd say he's worth a third exposure …