Thomas Schippers - Personal Life

Personal Life

Although gay, Schippers married, in 1965, Elaine Lane "Nonie" Phipps (1939–1973). An heiress to the Grace shipping fortune and a daughter of the noted American polo player Michael Grace Phipps, she died of cancer in 1973. Schippers died of the same disease four years later.

According to the professor, writer, and opera scholar John Louis DiGaetani, Schippers had a lengthy romantic relationship with the composer Gian Carlo Menotti, in addition to a shorter romantic relationship with mathematician Sean Clarke. A biography of Leonard Bernstein states that Schippers and Bernstein also were intimately involved.

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