Representations of queer identity in the opera Fellow Travelers by Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce

Smith, Lucas

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127093 Copy

Description

Title

Representations of queer identity in the opera Fellow Travelers by Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce

Author(s)

Smith, Lucas

Issue Date

2025

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Tharp, Reynold

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Tharp, Reynold

Committee Member(s)

• Taylor, Stephen
• Silvers, Michael
• Tilley, Michael

Department of Study

School of Music

Discipline

Music

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

A.Mus.D. (doctoral)

Date of Ingest

2025-03-27T12:33:42-05:00

Keyword(s)

• Fellow Travelers
• Gregory Spears
• Greg Pierce
• opera
• LGBTQ
• queer
• music theory
• Lavender Scare

Language

eng

Abstract

This doctoral thesis examines the 2016 opera Fellow Travelers by composer Gregory Spears and librettist Greg Pierce. The opera follows the gay romance of two State Department employees during the Lavender Scare of the McCarthy era in 1950s America. Touching on themes of queer coding, internalized homophobia, and secret love, the opera highlights the discrimination that queer individuals faced while focusing on its central love story. My analysis centers on the musical characterizations of the three leading roles in the opera. Each characters’ music is analyzed for how it represents their specific struggles—the conflict between religious devotion and same-sex desire, freedom and control through the performance of “straight drag,” and allyship to those experiencing discrimination. Themes of silence, flirtation, and coded language integral to the lovers’ relationship are examined. Furthermore, the ways in which symbols of circularity and large-scale musical repetitions expose repressed psychological motivations are explored. Fellow Travelers represents an important portrayal of queer experience on the operatic stage—one of many in the last 20 years. Operas with explicitly queer protagonists are a relatively new phenomenon, and no current scholarship exists analyzing these most recent representations of queer experience. Through a detailed musical and theoretical analysis of Fellow Travelers, I hope to highlight the richness and complexity of its queer protagonists and bring attention to the need for further scholarship of other such important, but historically underrepresented stories on the operatic stage.

Type of Resource

text

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2024 Lucas Smith

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