Fellow Travelers is an opera in 16 scenes composed by Gregory Spears to a libretto by Greg Pierce, based on Thomas Mallon's 2007 novel Fellow Travelers.
A co-commission by Cincinnati Opera and G. Sterling Zinsmeyer, the opera was developed by Opera Fusion: New Works, a collaboration between Cincinnati Opera and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music which focuses on the creation of new American operas.
Fellow Travelers | |
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Opera by Gregory Spears | |
Librettist | Greg Pierce |
Language | English |
Based on | Fellow Travelers by Thomas Mallon |
Premiere | 17 June 2016 |
Fellow Travelers premiered at Cincinnati Opera in June 2016 in a production directed by Kevin Newbury, which was subsequently presented by the Prototype Festival in New York City in January 2018 and the Lyric Opera of Chicago in March 2018. This production has since been presented by companies such as Des Moines Metro Opera, Virginia Opera, and Arizona Opera.
Minnesota Opera presented a new production of Fellow Travelers directed by Peter Rothstein in June 2018. This production has since been presented by companies such as Boston Lyric Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Opera Columbus, and Madison Opera.
Opera Parallèle will present the West Coast premiere of Fellow Travelers in San Francisco in June 2024 in a new production directed by Brian Staufenbiel.
Role | Voice type | Premiere cast, June 17, 2016 (Conductor: Mark Gibson) |
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Timothy Laughlin | tenor | Aaron Blake |
Hawkins Fuller | baritone | Joseph Lattanzi |
Mary Johnson | soprano | Devon Guthrie |
Senator Charles E. Potter/General Airlie/Bartender | baritone | Vernon Hartman |
Estonian Frank/Interrogator/Senator Joseph McCarthy | baritone | Marcus DeLoach |
Potter's Assistant/Bookseller/Party Guest/Technician/French Priest | bass-baritone | Christian Pursell |
Tommy McIntyre | baritone | Paul Scholten |
Miss Lightfoot | soprano | Alexandra Schoeny |
Lucy | soprano | Tayla Lieberman |
The opera is set in Washington D.C., during the McCarthy era of the 1950s and focuses on the "lavender scare", a witch hunt and mass firings of gay people from the United States government. The story centers on the love affair between two men working for the federal government—Hawkins "Hawk" Fuller, a State Department official, and Timothy Laughlin, a recent college graduate working in a senator's office.
Fellow Travelers has been widely acclaimed by critics since its premiere in 2016. Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote in the The New York Times following its world premiere in Cincinnati, "The opening act is a near-perfect example of fast-flowing musical drama. The budding attraction between Tim and Hawk has all the infectious warmth, humor and sweetness of the early scenes in "La Bohème." . . . With its smart music and sharp-edged romantic drama, "Fellow Travelers" seems assured of lasting appeal. But the large clusters of audience members who stayed behind in the lobby after Sunday's performance discussing and analyzing the show suggest that — at this moment in time, in particular — it offered much more than mere entertainment."
Reviewing the New York premiere, Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times wrote: "Originality in the arts is a vague and overhyped virtue. Few works are completely original. All creative artists borrow from others, both masters they revere and contemporaries they may be in competition with. Still, originality just comes through sometimes, as the composer Gregory Spears demonstrates in his personal, boldly quirky score for the wrenching, and sadly timely, opera Fellow Travelers."
And describing the music of Fellow Travelers, John von Rhein wrote in the Chicago Tribune following the performances at the Lyric Opera of Chicago: "Spears is unusually sensitive to the irregular cadences of American speech, and his setting of words to music is masterly... "Fellow Travelers" is one of the most accomplished new American operas I have encountered in recent years."
An audio recording of Fellow Travelers was released in 2017 by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's Fanfare Cincinnati record label featuring the original cast from the world premiere, with Mark Gibson conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
The opera is scored for a 17-person chamber orchestra. According to the Opera News critic, the score uses minimalist soundscapes combined at times with a "neo-Puccinian lyricism".
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