Minnesota Opera dives into LGBTQ history with 'Fellow Travelers'

Listen above: Melissa Ousley speaks with stars Andy Acosta and Hadleigh Adams and composer Gregory Spears about Minnesota Opera's Fellow Travelers.

"The numbers are shocking. We think over 5,000 lost their jobs. Dozens, if not hundreds, committed suicide because they were outed at work or to their families. There was no right of appeal at all."

Peter Rothstein is talking about the "lavender scare," a witch hunt against homosexual people that happened in 1950s America and led to mass firings from their posts in government service.

Homosexuals were a security risk, the argument ran, and open to blackmail from foreign governments at a time when consensual sex between same-sex couples was illegal in America.

The vindictively homophobic attitudes of the McCarthy era form the backdrop to Fellow Travelers, an opera by the American composer Gregory Spears. Rothstein is directing the regional premiere for Minnesota Opera at the Cowles Center in Minneapolis.

Fellow Travelers tells the story of a clandestine love affair between two men working for the federal government in Washington, D.C. — Hawk Fuller, a State Department employee, and Tim Laughlin, a college graduate interning in a senator's office.

For Rothstein, the oppressive atmosphere of a period when homosexuals were routinely dubbed "sex perverts" by the government has a profound effect on every character in the opera.

"Most of our rehearsal time has been trying to navigate the psychology of these characters," he says. "How did the hysteria of the time affect them? How did they go through the world? How did they find the courage to execute their sexuality by whatever means they had open to them?"

Although Fellow Travelers is set at a very particular time and place in U.S. history, Rothstein is quick to emphasize that the issues that it raises are by no means dead and buried, or irrelevant to the present.

"January 10, 2017, John Kerry issued an apology to all victims of the lavender scare on behalf of the U.S. government," Rothstein says.

"Less than two weeks later, on Inauguration Day, that apology was retracted by the Trump administration, and all LGBTQ issues were removed from U.S. government websites. Our current political structure is trying to erase that part of our ugly history. So I think our liberties are absolutely at risk again." While Fellow Travelers is not the first opera to feature gay characters, Rothstein feels it is an important step in pushing LGBTQ issues closer to the operatic mainstream.

"I've been working in opera for 25 years," he says, "and I've never directed a gay character, which is astounding. So the art form still has so much reach to do, as far as the stories we tell, and how broadly we paint civilization."

He also points to the broader themes addressed in Fellow Travelers, which give the opera relevance to audiences of all creeds, persuasions and sexual orientations.

"I think it's about American history, and the psychology of witch hunts," he argues. "The psychology of this piece is alive and well, and part of our national identity. It is not just for gay people. It's perhaps even more for nongay people, to try to understand what gay people's struggles are."

Fellow Travelers was first performed at Cincinnati Opera two years ago, and immediately captured the attention of theater and music critics. Two months ago, it premiered at the Chicago Lyric Opera, and Daniela Candillari, the conductor of that production, has flown west to lead Minnesota Opera's new staging.

For Candillari, Fellow Travelers works not only as a biting political drama, but also as a compelling musical experience.

"Gregory Spears' music is beautifully structured and is really engaging and welcoming. It has openness of the soul. In Chicago I had friends and family come, some of whom had never been to opera before. They loved it immediately."

Candillari feels that Fellow Travelers will work particularly effectively in the 500-seat auditorium of the Cowles Center, a much smaller venue than the Ordway Music Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota Opera's usual base of operations.

"It's such an intimate piece, and the ensemble we have created here — nine singers on stage and 17 players in the pit — is really a chamber-music ensemble. And I think because of the immediacy of emotion in the opera, a smaller theater is really the right setting."

For Rothstein, too, the intimacy of Hawk's and Tim's relationship in Fellow Travelers — an all-too-human mix of happiness, difficulty and disillusion — is at the heart of the opera's appeal to audiences.

"The dynamics of their relationship is not unique to gay relationships," Rothstein says. "We have power dynamics in heterosexual relationships, and hypocrisy, too."

Candillari agrees that Fellow Travelers is at heart a universal human drama, set in specific circumstances but relevant across the decades, and even centuries.

"At the end of the day, it's a love story about two people," she says. "It also gives us a chance to reflect in our time, in our day, on what we can do better as a community, which is hopefully trying to make the world a good place for everyone."

For tickets to the Minnesota Opera Production of Fellow Travelers, click here.

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