Gregory Spears opera Fellow Travelers celebrates its 10th anniversary with a nationwide USA tour collaborating with the Lavender Names Project

Gregory Spears: Fellow Travelers - Andy Acosta, Joseph Lattanzi - Seattle Opera (Photo: Sunny Martini)

They served their country. Their country fired them. And it's still happening 

Gregory Spears opera Fellow Travelers, with a libretto by Greg Pierce, premiered at Cincinnati Opera in 2016, directed by Kevin Newbury. Since then the work has been staged by more than 15 opera companies including London’s University College Opera.

The work is based on Thomas Mallon’s best-selling 2007 novel which tells a love-story set against the Lavender Scare, a piece of LGBTQ+ history from the 1950s that is still relatively unknown. The opera speaks to the experiences of those who were banned from government employment and subject to humiliating investigations because of their sexuality. The novel went on to form the basis for the 2023 TV series starring Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey, which reached wide audiences.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Spears' opera, director Kevin Newbury's production is undertaking a nationwide tour of the USA. The tour launched in February and March at Seattle Opera and Portland Opera. In his review of the Seattle Opera premiere, Thomas May said in The Seattle Times that 'Though rooted in fear from seven decades ago, the story feels unsettlingly present' and described the score as 'a sound world at once intimate and unexpectedly expansive, its modest forces carrying emotional weight well beyond their scale — much like the opera itself. '

The USA tour, one of the largest consortium projects ever attempted in the US opera industry, continues this summer with performances at San Diego Opera (July 10-12) and New York’s Glimmerglass Festival (July 18-Aug. 16), and 2027 performances begin with the opera’s Texas premiere at Austin Opera (Feb. 6-7), with Andy Acosta and Joseph Lattanzi in the two leading roles.

For this tour, the staging broadens its impact through the Lavender Names Project, a pioneering collaboration with the American LGBTQ+ Museum, ALL OUT, and the Lambda Archives of San Diego building community around the country by shedding light on a forgotten chapter of LGBTQ+ history that echoes today's political climate, which is again marked by the policing of identity.  This nationwide, grassroots archival research and community outreach initiative will galvanize libraries, universities and LGBTQ+ organizations in each city. 

Gregory Spears: Fellow Travelers - the closing scene at Seattle Opera (Photo: Sunny Martini)

Over the past year, the Lavender Names Project has collected photos and stories of members of the LGBTQ+ community who were systematically discriminated against, fired and mistreated by federal and local governments in the United States, including the military, from the "Lavender Scare" in 1953, to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the 1990s, to today.  The tour includes curated lobby installations for each performance venue which will feature these collected stories and exhibits detailing the history of the Lavender Scare.