Are You Now or Have You Ever?

MY FATHER, who was born in 1928, extolled the 1950s as the last decade during which “the United States made sense.” As a conservative white male military vet, his opinion wasn’t surprising: he believed he’d earned part ownership of this country. Marx would have defined that ownership as exclusionary but, to my father, Marx represented communism and communism was evil.

Joseph Lattanzi and Laura Santamaria-Mendez 
Photo Credit: Brent DeLanoy/
The Glimmerglass Festival

And communists were being systematically revealed and removed from their jobs, both in Hollywood and in Congress. Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel “Fellow Travelers” is set during that era, but takes the persecution further by placing at its center two men who become lovers while working in Washington, D.C. as the spectre of being outed – and thus career-ruined – draws closer and grows more ominous.

Although the story is better known as a TV mini-series (taking the story well beyond the bounds of the book), the opera packs a greater emotional punch, because that’s what good opera does. The shrewd melding of music and words bypasses that part of the brain we use to decode novels and goes straight to our emotional nerve centers. TV writing, no matter how critically lauded, is too formulaic to allow for emotional depths. Even if ads aren’t part of your streaming service, TV writing is structured to accommodate ads.

Director Kevin Newbury read the novel “and I fell in love with the characters,” he says, so he shepherded the opera into being by giving the book to both librettist Greg Pierce and composer Gregory Spears. “I wanted to write a love story,” says Spears, “and opera does love better than any other genre.”

As an opera,“Fellow Travelers” is now a decade old and that anniversary is being celebrated with a national tour taking it to ten different companies. It played in Seattle, Portland, and San Diego before settling in through August 16 at the Glimmerglass Festival. It’s a top-notch production that underscores the power of words and music when they’re deftly combined. 

From the perspective of a straight white male, it’s easy to reckon that the end of McCarthy-era blacklisting meant the end of persecution over philosophical and religious beliefs. After all, that safety is now enshrined in law. But such protection never extended, until very recently, to those of a non-straight sexuality – and lately all such protection is being swept away by the fascists currently in government.

Timothy Laughlin is a boyish man in D.C. seeking to use his writing skills to pursue some manner of government job. As portrayed by tenor Colin Aikins, he is smart and articulate and vulnerable. He meets Hawkins Fuller  – “Friends call me ‘Hawk.’ And now you’re a friend.” – on a park bench in Dupont Circle. It’s 1953. Baritone Joseph Lattanzi brings a blustery handsomeness to a character made all the more real by his contradictions. He’s a hail-fellow-well-met type who livens a party but is covering his own vulnerability. And both of these men are doubly vulnerable as they hide their homosexuality.

Characters are more effective when they reveal aspects of themselves that seem to play against our expectations; the same holds true for music. Spears’s writing is many-layered, using the instrumental forces with a chamber-orchestra approach. Piano is prominent, often placing its percussive accents atop minimalist-style string sequences, all of it performed with exceptional skill by the Glimmerglass orchestra under the baton of Kelly Kuo. We get some big brass statements at the top of the show as a kind of fanfare to welcome us to the lonely park bench on which the action commences.

Jose Olivares, Joseph Lattanzi, and Luke Harnish
Photo Credit: Brent DeLanoy/
The Glimmerglass Festival

True to his word, Hawk places a recommendation that secures Tim a government job, as speechwriter to Michigan senator Charles E. Potter (Yichen Xue), who (true to his actual history) walks in with the help of two canes owing to the loss of his legs in France during World War II. Potter is an ardent anti-communist, and became a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Tim’s brief interview with Potter, a dance of discovering each other’s politics, is conducted over insistent music of a chaconne-like character.

And Tim is pleased to be in this company, because he, too, is a conservative anti-communist, more in line with McCarthy’s antics than he perhaps cares to admit, and a devoted Catholic as well. All of which is tested after Hawk, on a surprise visit to Tim’s rooms, determinedly kisses him and persuades him to bed.

Up until this point, the lyrics by Greg Pierce have been resonant and efficient, taking us through seemingly mundane workplace conversations with effective subtexts woven through. Now the piece grows more lush and poetic as Hawk and Tim liken their ecstasy to the paradise of a place like Bermuda. It’s a soaring duet that begins with the couple singing overlapping individual thoughts, but culminating in a confluence where “Under the sheets in a tropical storm, you. / The rain, finding its way through the gaps / in the straw of our roof / onto your chest. / Two little drops. / Paradise.”

This duet is in 6/8 time, and much of the score is written in some increment of three, a tempo marking that it both elegant (see “A Little Night Music” and the J. Strauss legacy) and, according to some, unnatural, as it goes against the count of our natural walking pace. 

Tim seeks refuge in church the following day, and there, in front of a giant judgmental crucifix he ponders his encounter. “How many hours?” he asks, then, “How warm, how strong .../ His hands,” noting unironically, “I died last night.”

Mary Johnson, a secretary in Hawk’s office, is quick to figure out the relationship between the men. She likes Tim and thus worries on Tim’s behalf. Soprano Keely Futterer, fresh from her role as Despina in the Glimmerglass “Così,” is 1950s-garbed (excellent work all around by costume designer Devario D. Simmons) and inhabits that oppressive ‘50s head-space quite credibly, as when she reveals that she’s one-night-stand pregnant and must find an illicit way to terminate the pregnancy. (And here we are, in 2026, careening back to that aspect of the era, among many other horrific aspects that there never seems to be enough enlightenment to leave permanently behind.)

Although Mary is devoted to Hawk, he’s ratted out by another woman in his office, the ironically named Miss Lightfoot (Kaileigh Riess) and thus is called to Room M304, where Scott McLeod’s goons interrogate him. McLeod (unseen in this piece) headed the U.S. Department of State's Bureau for Security and Consular Affairs, another example of a figure from history woven into this tale.

Set Designer Vita Tzykun has created a series of fat filing cabinets that, lined up by themselves and shadowed by Thomas C. Hase’s lighting pendant, create a suitably oppressive look. Hawk’s interrogation is a childishly ludicrous affair, conducted with perfect gravity by baritone Luke Harnish (who will return in Act Two as McCarthy himself). Hawk must walk to the wall and back. The Interrogator, listening for a sibilant S, says, “Repeat the word ‘Disstrict.’” Hawk does so, and is asked to do it again. Then he’s given a lie-detector test. He breezes through the procedures, seemingly unconcerned, but the music tells us that has buried his worry.

Of course, Senator McCarthy knows the score, and our glimpse of him at the top of Act Two is chilling. He’s reading newspaper-published comments from Vermont Senator Ralph Flanders, who is seeking to censure McCarthy, but the Senator from Wisconsin laughs it off by declaring, “They’re all pansies up there in Vermont.”

Colin Aikins, Joseph Lattanzi, and 
ensemble members | Photo Credit: 
Brent DeLanoy/The Glimmerglass Festival

Some of those filing cabinets spin to create other settings; thus we see a white enamel sink in sideboard unit for Mary’s kitchen, with tiles of ‘50s green even as the flanking file cabinets continue to look. Mary is worried; “I’ve known Hawkins a very long time,” she says. “Everyone loves him. Including me.” Leading to an aria of depth and complexity as she sorts through her own conflicts even while trying to protect Tim. “There are times I wish I didn’t know him so well, if you know what I mean,” adding, “He’s ‘wonderful,’” which is a Tim has been overusing lately. And I believe I caught some musical clues behind that word, resonating with its prominent use in Handel’s “Messiah.”

Tim is in love; to Hawk he’s a diversion. Stories that tell of an aggressive suitor taking advantage of an innocent’s willingness resonate throughout time and literature, from “Don Juan” and “Clarissa” on up to “Fifty Shades of Grey” and beyond. That this is a same-sex story only means that there are no gender restrictions on such a tale.

Trying to forget Hawk, Tim enlists in the Army and is sent to France. But his years away fail to dim his passion. Hawk, now in a lavender marriage to a woman named Lucy (Laura Santamaria-Mendez), is living the suburban life, but sets up a love nest he can share with Tim. But it’s doomed, and they know it. Hawk sings a heartbreaking aria that explores the limits of a single chord: “Our very own home ... / Bricks ... a fireplace / Matching plates ... a bed ... a bookshelf / Towels ... gray for you, purple for me.”

Even as so many were fired back then because their sexuality didn’t align with McCarthy’s and Eisenhower’s beliefs, so too were prominent people in the arts denied access to their livelihoods. But it always is a fascist priority to muzzle the arts, and now we’re watching them use the cudgel of financial strangulation as funding vanishes and the virus of ignorance impels onlookers to shrug and say, “Who cares?”

We all care, of course, but won’t know it until the noose is drawn tight enough to be noticed. And we care on behalf of those who have been or continue to be more immediately affected by vituperative discrimination or censorship. This superb opera captures a moment in time seen by few but resulting in the suffering of many. At the end of it, as Tim, now unwelcome in Washington, is back at Dupont Circle considering his fate, a photo-laden back wall is revealed. These are photographs collected by the Lavender Names Project, a national grassroots effort to “collect photos and stories of members of the LGBTQ+ community who were systematically discriminated against and fired by federal and local governments in the United States.” Which means that the opera may be over, but awareness and activism must continue.

Fellow Travelers
Music by Gregory Spears
Libretto by Greg Pierce
Based on the book by Thomas Mallon
National Tour Produced by Up Until Now Collective
Produced in collaboration with The Glimmerglass Festival
Conducted by Kelly Kuo
Directed by Kevin Newbury
Glimmerglass Festival, through August 16, 2026