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'Harvey Milk,' a Gay Opera As a Grand Coming-Out Party
By BERNARD HOLLAND (The New York Times 6/4/1995)
"Harvey Milk" comes as no surprise. It or something like it has been inevitable, if not overdue. Such is the powerful attraction of the gay sensibility to grand opera. Gay men form a passionate audience for the medium, and the creative among them are key operatives in its design, production and performance.
While the gay movement still has no Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi, it does have local heroes like Harvey Milk of San Francisco, the martyred city politician whose exit from the closet and progress into public life brought empowerment to those accustomed to furtiveness and discretion. Milk is remembered in "Harvey Milk," a docu-opera with music by Stewart Wallace and libretto by Michael Korie.
Operas about homosexual love are not new. Benjamin Britten has explored its satisfactions, pain and loneliness with great eloquence. "Harvey Milk" is something else. The satisfactions, pains and loneliness of one man seem to melt into a much larger fabric. For this is a party, not always a happy or peaceful one, but a grand coming-out party. An emerging culture not only insinuates its connection to opera but occupies its stage outright.
Familiar cliches of gay life are paraded past us: drag in various states of dress and undress, an opera diva (Maria Callas) as graven image, enlarged and suitable for worship. We are given one hippie, one black-leather couple bound by dog collar and chain, a chorus of faceless men pursuing sailors in the park. Butch and effeminate are catalogued and set out for our examination.
Homophobic police melt into Nazis as Milk's gayness and Jewishness become compatible sources of persecution. Milk himself finds it hard to compete. A true hero when we read about him in the newspapers, on the opera stage he shrinks to an ebullient small-time entrepreneur with political guts. Admirable as Milk's work as city supervisor may have been, the administrative offices of the City of San Francisco do not make riveting opera.
"Harvey Milk" is lopsided. Act I's resume of childhood and adult self-discovery is reasonably convincing. Afterward the opera plunges over a cliff. The murderous Dan White (Raymond Very) may be in life precisely as Mr. Wallace and Mr. Korie describe him, but onstage he is a stick figure, a repository for right-wing intolerance. Perhaps the reason the murder scene falls so flat is that victim and perpetrator come across as one set of ideas killing another. This may also explain why the elaborate finale, with its chorus of hope and remembrance, seems overextended.
Indeed, "Harvey Milk" is eerily secondhand. It regurgitates public images and perceptions, the iconography of the news report. Like recent operatic portrayals of Einstein, Malcolm X, Klinghoffer and Nixon, it offers not people but photographs of people.
"Harvey Milk" doesn't give a music critic much to do. When Mr. Wallace's characters speak for themselves, they sing in long, smooth, characterless lines. The rest of the music seems not so much composed as collected. Broadway, rhythm-and-blues and a variety of pop styles are inserted. The few vivid moments are borrowed: the Castro Street percussion patterns and the signature brass chords of "Tosca." Captions-in-sound like this relate to composition as illustration does to art, or as advertising copy does to Tolstoy. Nothing is original or personal. Music, using buzz-words, corroborates the presence of items and ideas onstage.
'Harvey Milk,' a Gay Opera As a Grand Coming-Out Party
By BERNARD HOLLAND (The New York Times 6/4/1995)
"Harvey Milk" comes as no surprise. It or something like it has been inevitable, if not overdue. Such is the powerful attraction of the gay sensibility to grand opera. Gay men form a passionate audience for the medium, and the creative among them are key operatives in its design, production and performance.
While the gay movement still has no Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi, it does have local heroes like Harvey Milk of San Francisco, the martyred city politician whose exit from the closet and progress into public life brought empowerment to those accustomed to furtiveness and discretion. Milk is remembered in "Harvey Milk," a docu-opera with music by Stewart Wallace and libretto by Michael Korie.
Operas about homosexual love are not new. Benjamin Britten has explored its satisfactions, pain and loneliness with great eloquence. "Harvey Milk" is something else. The satisfactions, pains and loneliness of one man seem to melt into a much larger fabric. For this is a party, not always a happy or peaceful one, but a grand coming-out party. An emerging culture not only insinuates its connection to opera but occupies its stage outright.
Familiar cliches of gay life are paraded past us: drag in various states of dress and undress, an opera diva (Maria Callas) as graven image, enlarged and suitable for worship. We are given one hippie, one black-leather couple bound by dog collar and chain, a chorus of faceless men pursuing sailors in the park. Butch and effeminate are catalogued and set out for our examination.
Homophobic police melt into Nazis as Milk's gayness and Jewishness become compatible sources of persecution. Milk himself finds it hard to compete. A true hero when we read about him in the newspapers, on the opera stage he shrinks to an ebullient small-time entrepreneur with political guts. Admirable as Milk's work as city supervisor may have been, the administrative offices of the City of San Francisco do not make riveting opera.
"Harvey Milk" is lopsided. Act I's resume of childhood and adult self-discovery is reasonably convincing. Afterward the opera plunges over a cliff. The murderous Dan White (Raymond Very) may be in life precisely as Mr. Wallace and Mr. Korie describe him, but onstage he is a stick figure, a repository for right-wing intolerance. Perhaps the reason the murder scene falls so flat is that victim and perpetrator come across as one set of ideas killing another. This may also explain why the elaborate finale, with its chorus of hope and remembrance, seems overextended.
Indeed, "Harvey Milk" is eerily secondhand. It regurgitates public images and perceptions, the iconography of the news report. Like recent operatic portrayals of Einstein, Malcolm X, Klinghoffer and Nixon, it offers not people but photographs of people.
"Harvey Milk" doesn't give a music critic much to do. When Mr. Wallace's characters speak for themselves, they sing in long, smooth, characterless lines. The rest of the music seems not so much composed as collected. Broadway, rhythm-and-blues and a variety of pop styles are inserted. The few vivid moments are borrowed: the Castro Street percussion patterns and the signature brass chords of "Tosca." Captions-in-sound like this relate to composition as illustration does to art, or as advertising copy does to Tolstoy. Nothing is original or personal. Music, using buzz-words, corroborates the presence of items and ideas onstage.
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