The opera Fellow Travelers tells the story of two men who were government employees and fell in love. When it premiered in 2016, it was less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that gay marriage was a fundamental right.
The lead plaintiff in the historic Supreme Court case was Jim Obergefell, who had just won his years-long battle to get married to his partner.
“Obergefell actually came to the premiere, because he lived in Cincinnati at the time. So it was sort of an exciting time,” said the opera’s composer, Gregory Spears.
The Fellow Travelers opera begins a 10th-anniversary tour this weekend in Seattle. The opera takes place in the 1950s, when federal government employees who were gay were being systematically sought out and fired for their sexuality.
Fellow Travelers is based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon. Librettist Greg Pierce and Spears had the challenge of turning it into an opera.
“It takes place in the complicated political environment of Washington D.C. in the ‘50s. But at its heart, it’s a love story, and that’s what attracted me to it,” Spears said.
The opera's two main characters are Timothy Laughlin and Hawkins Fuller, known as “Hawk.”
“Hawk is a character who’s very suave and charming, but it’s hard to kind of see into his heart,” Spears said. “At the end of the opera, we hear this aria — it’s very dark and subdued — where we finally get to look into this man’s heart and see what’s there.”
Spears said he relied on storytelling techniques from 19th century operas as a guide for Fellow Travelers.
“But of course in this case, it’s two men, rather than a man and a woman as it would have been in the 19th century,” Spears said. “For me, I tried to stay very close to that feeling throughout. So I think coming back to that: How do we make people care not only about these characters but about their love for one another?”
Lavender Names Project
When Fellow Travelers premiered in 2016 the performance ended with a montage of black-and-white images, representing people in the 1950s who had lost their government jobs because of their sexuality.
This time around, the opera is part of an effort called the Lavender Names Project to make real names and real faces part of the opera’s finale.
“Instead of stock images from the ‘50s, actual images of actual employees who experienced the ‘Lavender Scare,’” Spears said.
Among those who have submitted their stories for the project is Randy Schoesler of Seattle, who was born in 1952, around the time the opera is set.
“So in a way, there's a connection there, simply because here I am, a gay man coming onto the planet about the same time that this kind of stuff was going on, only to find myself sort of caught up in it as an adult 30 years later,” Schoesler said.
Members of Schoesler’s family had served in the military for generations before him. In the early 1980s, he was working in intelligence for the U.S. Air Force and had completed officer training school. But his bosses found out he was gay and he lost his security clearance and was later discharged.
“I was not out. At the time you could not be in the military,” Schoesler said. “This pre-dates ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ by several years.
Schoesler said he wanted to be part of the Lavender Names Project to share his experience.
“I want people to know that it felt like sh--, to be quite blunt,” Schoesler said. “It was unfair. I was betrayed, and I wasn’t the only one who was betrayed at the time. There was a group of 10 to 12 of us who were all betrayed by the same person at the same time.”
Schoesler has seen history repeating itself. In 2025, the U.S. Department of Defense began banning trans servicemembers from the military.
“It brings up feelings of rage, because I know what it's like to be put in that kind of a situation unjustly because of who you are, as opposed to anything you may have done,” Schoesler said.
Schoesler, now 73, stays connected to his military past as a member of the Seattle Opera Veterans Choir.
“The choir, for quite a few years, was really my only way to have a social life with other veterans, plus developing such singing skills as I do have,” Schoesler said. “It has been a refuge, because for quite a while, it’s been kind of rough.”
He’s eager to see Fellow Travelers, the first LGBTQ-centered performance on the Seattle Opera’s main stage.
“I think it's about damn time,” Schoesler said. “Gay men, lesbian women, trans people, we have our stories, we have our lives, and it's about time that the mainstream began to realize that we're people too.”
The Seattle Opera presents Fellow Travelers at McCaw Hall this Saturday through March 1.
