Following the announced of the Washington National Opera’s (WNO) 2025-26 season, it was revealed that “Fellows Travelers” was canceled by its creators. The New York Times reported that Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce decided to pull the work in a letter to WNO over concerns due to the Trump takeover at the Kennedy Center. According to a letter by the {…}
Opera Columbus is set to present “Fellow Travelers.” The Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce opera is set to open on Feb. 25 with an additional showcase scheduled for Feb. 27, 2022. The opera will star Brian Vu, Carl DuPont, Meghan Kasanders, Calvin Griffin, Tommy McIntyre, Justin T. Swain, Victoria Okafor, Miguel Pedroza, and Adia Evans. Kelly Kuo will conduct the {…}
The Florida Grand Opera has announced its 2021-22 season featuring four productions and celebrating its 80 anniversary. Andre Previn’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” opens the season in January. Performance Dates: Jan. 22-Feb. 5, 2022 Verdi’s masterpiece “Rigoletto” takes the stage in March with audiences getting a chance to hear some of the most popular melodies in opera. Performance Dates: March {…}
As we continue our Pride Month Celebration, we turn our focus to some of the essential operas representing LGBTQIA+ culture. So for this quiz, we give you a few clues and then ask you to choose the opera that corresponds. As always, enjoy!
The good news – there is a lot of good opera going around North America throughout the weekend. As such, this weekend’s top picks were not easy to come by or select. But the curation came down to a number of unique new operas and rarely performed gems of old with star-studded casts stretching from the east all the way {…}
The Flordia Grand Opera has announced its 2020-21 season celebrating its 80 anniversary, the seventh oldest opera company in America. This season Knight Concert Hall will become the new home for FGO’s Made for Miami series branded “Opera at Knight” to showcase 20th and 21st century operatic work. The season will open with Verdi’s popular masterwork “La traviata.” Performance Dates: {…}
On November 8, 2019, Arizona Opera presented composer Gregory Spears and librettist Greg Pierce’s 2016 opera “Fellow Travelers.” Premiered at Cincinnati Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago presented the work in March 2018, and Minnesota Opera staged it three months later. That is not a surprise to anyone who has heard its enchantingly original music. Yes, it has its Puccini-style moments, but it also relates to much earlier music and contains tonal vocal harmony rarely heard in 21st century opera. Spears’ music shows human grace and warmth one moment and counteracts it with chilling dissonance the next. Thus, he magnifies and intensifies the conflict between characters.
Boston Lyric Opera presents the New England premiere of “Fellow Travelers.” The opera by composer Gregory Spears and librettist Greg Pierce’s is a political drama that follows a gay romance through the McCarthy-era “lavender scare.” The production is set to star Jesse Blumberg, Jesse Darden, Chelsea Basler, Simon Dyer James Maddalena, David McFerrin, Michelle Trainor, Vincent Turregano, and Brianna Robinson. The {…}
Boston Lyric Opera has announced its 2019-20 season, featuring productions that span three centuries of opera. The upcoming season will mark General & Artistic Director Esther Nelson’s 10th season with the company. According to the press release, BLO aims to focus on works that “reflect the highs and lows of power and politics,” while “bringing passionate opera installations to new neighborhoods, and {…}
After a successful premiere at the Cincinnati Opera last summer, “Fellow Travelers” is making it’s digital release on Sept. 15, before a physical release on Sept. 29. The new opera, written by Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce revisits the ‘lavender scare’ of the 1950’s McCarthy era, based on the 2007 novel by Thomas Mallon. The story of a love affair {…}
The cast of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s opera upcoming production of “Fellow Travelers” has been announced. For the Chicago premiere of the work tenor Jonas Hacker and baritone Joseph Lattanzi will sing the lead roles of Timothy Laughlin and Hawkins Fuller in the LGBT opera about two men who fall in love during the height of the McCarthy era in {…}