TRAILBLAZING

‘Fellow Travelers’ hacks out a new path for opera

2023-02-03 - By Page Laws

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

That’s the all-too-familiar conclusion of Robert Frost’s 1915 poem “The Road Not Taken,” a title often confused with “The Road Less Traveled,” M. Scott Peck’s 1978 pop psychology book. I bring up the pertinent if now trailworn Frost poem and Peck book — gay people tread the road less traveled — but do so to accentuate what feels like a genuine, noteworthy breakthrough from “two-roads” thinking.

Virginia Opera is presenting a musically and thematically groundbreaking 2016 opera about people placed on a life path fraught with trials, a path rarely if ever understood by those placed onto more frequently trodden byways. Straight people may think we know gay life, especially if we have gay friends. In all likelihood, however, we do not. This precious opera offers a daring, occasionally dark, a little shocking but thoroughly worthwhile, humanizing glimpse.

Centering on Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s “Red Scare” (hearings meant to out Communists in

the U.S. government and military) and his concomitant “Lavender Scare” (meant to force gays out of all public life), “Fellow Travelers” may well be to opera what Tony Kushner’s 1993 “Angels in America” was to theater. Take special note — the music of “Fellow Travelers” was composed by a prophet not yet sufficiently known and appreciated in his own

land. He is Virginia Beachborn, Cox High School-educated Gregory Spears, who was here to witness the Virginia premiere and thank his former tutor in composition, Adolphus Hailstork, then of Norfolk State University, later of Old Dominion. Although this is its commonwealth premiere, Spears’ “Fellow Travelers” has already been produced more than a

dozen times by national and regional operas, an astonishing success rate attributable to its high but also highly accessible art.

Based on the 2007 novel by Thomas Mallon, an erudite but cheeky writer, “Fellow Travelers” has a tight and fast-paced libretto by Greg Pierce. Pierce was paired with composer Spears (“the two Gregs,” said Spears) by

Kevin Newbury, the stage director, who led the world premiere of “Fellow Travelers” in Cincinnati. Newbury brought it to Virginia Opera at the behest of Artistic Director Adam Turner, who’d seen the Cincinnati production in 2016. As Turner said in a Jan. 24 event to re-introduce Spears to his community, “I saw my story — as a man happily married to a man.” Gay men and women in the arts — that’s a precious given and always has been. A gay man’s being able openly and comfortably to acknowledge his gay spouse — that’s still a fresh, incredibly hard-won freedom, achieved over centuries of struggle, often, by necessity, covert.

McCarthy and his Mephistophelean lawyer Roy Cohn (now also known as the star of “Angels in America” and a reallife mentor to the young Donald Trump) twisted the meaning of “fellow traveler” from quiet ally to dangerous covert agent of communist (and/or gay) evildoers. The truth revealed in the source novel and opera (where the character Cohn haunts the text but never appears) is that Cohn, who died of AIDS, and McCarthy, who died of alcoholism, were closeted gay men, hypocrites.

But how could one pack this story, encompassing a decade of Washington intrigue — millions of whispered, shouted words, recorded and unrecorded — into one fast-moving opera?

The secret is to create one fictitious gay couple and follow their vicissitudes, using Newbury’s theatrical means (a bedroom scene placed in counterpoint with a lie-detector scene; “offstage” figures behind a scrim looking onto other scenes judgmentally).

The couple consists of recent Fordham grad Timothy Laughlin (Andres Acosta) and his older, more dominant lover Hawkins Fuller (Joseph Lattanzi, reprising his Cincinnati role). They dwell among the staff level of workers who, then as now, know all, see all, and are capable of telling all the real skinny in Washington.

When we meet Fuller, he is already deputy assistant at the State Department. His job is to “convince the Estonians we love them.” He helps his new “friend” Timmy (whom he has nicknamed “Skippy,” to connote his wholesome, milk-swigging Catholic demeanor and anti-Communist beliefs) to become the speechwriter for Sen. Charles Potter (John Fulton).

Potter is working with McCarthy (a properly blustering Joshua Jeremiah). Add a woman bewildered by but loving toward both Timmy and the manipulative Hawkins, who are her friends. She’s Mary Johnson (Katherine Pracht, delivering the melismatic flourishes her role demands in a crystalline soprano). Add a villainous Miss Lightfoot (Katrina Thurman), who convincingly delivers Hawkins to

that gay-catching lie-detector test he somehow manages to pass. Add Lucy (Kaileigh Riess), one of a seemingly small army of women unwittingly recruited as show wives for

D.C.’s gay men. (McCarthy has one, and Lucy is fated to become Mrs. Hawkins Fuller).

But the miracle is the music, wedded to Pierce’s libretto in the show’s only

true and lasting marriage. Lovingly conducted by Turner, the Virginia Opera graces the pit, 22 strong (up from the 17 called for in the score). The extra lushness of sound, Turner happily admits, comes from extra strings.

In a pre-show lecture (available at vaopera.org), resident scholar Joshua Borths notes the phenomenal growth in the number of contemporary operas — more world premieres in the past 25 years than in the previous 75. He also notes the “diversity” among the new works, their “beauty and accessibility” plus their “relevance” to political and social issues.

“Fellow Travelers” is the epitome of such work, with a score and libretto both challenging and accessible, esoteric and earthy. Borths recommends that one listen “down and through” to appreciate telegraphic minimalism suddenly enhanced by almost Baroque ornamentation (as in Mary’s flourishes, or Tim’s choked-up stammer-singing of his beloved’s name: “Haw, Haw, Hawkins”).

Actor/singer Acosta as Tim is particularly breathtaking in his aria, “I died last night.” He’s referring to his first sexual encounter with Hawkins (indeed, with anybody). The metaphor of the act as “a little death” — un petit mort — may be familiar from the French phrase. But Acosta’s acting and singing bring his Catholic anguish — his belief that his kind of love is a mortal sin — into full realization. We share his deep love and even deeper despair, both of them merited, as the opera will reveal.

With the legalization of marriage equality, the days of paranoia depicted in this opera have somewhat abated. We hope. But what about trans rights? And what about … ?

Go see this stunning opera. Lest we forget.

Resident scholar Joshua Borths notes ... the “diversity” among the new works, their “beauty and accessibility” plus their “relevance” to political and social issues.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya. yale.edu