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Gregory Spears' "Fellow Travelers" Premieres at Cincinnati Opera



Gregory Spears
is a crucial voice in the contemporary opera landscape. His compositions, such as Paul's Case and Our Ladyshow how opera can communicate with the history of dramatic vocal music—from medieval liturgical music to the development of opera in the 17th century—while still remaining dedicated to exploring contemporary issues of identity, desire, and politics.

His latest project, Fellow Travelers, is based on the 2007 Thomas Mallon novel of the same name, with a libretto by Greg Pierce. Like Paul's Case, Fellow Travelers focuses on the experience of a young man in the process of discovering his identity, while reconciling his desires with American society. Fellow Travelers is set during the so-called "lavender scare" in 1950's, an often silenced era of oppression overshadowed by the more visible expulsion of suspected communist "deviants" from government and industry. Spears writes, "it's about a part of our history which was almost invisible, and I think one of the things opera can do is make invisible things visible."

Fellow Travelers will see its world premiere on June 17th at the Cincinnati Opera, who commissioned and co-produced the new work along with G. Sterling Zinsmeyer. Check out Spears' aria "Our Very Own Home" from Fellow Travelers, which weaves a thread between post-minimalism and early baroque monody, performed at a 2013 workshop of the opera: 

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