Cory Weaver

During the mid-1990s, the composer Stewart Wallace and his librettist Michael Korie collaborated on a commissioned opera that chronicled the life of Harvey Milk, the San Francisco city supervisor and LGBT activist whose assassination in 1978 became a flashpoint in America’s civil rights history. While the work that premiered in Houston and San Francisco traced many significant moments in Milk’s life, the score’s original incarnation was an overwrought affair that lacked the focus required to deliver a compelling tribute to this political figure’s existence.

Nearly three decades later, the creative team’s fundamentally overhauled Harvey Milk Reimagined returns to San Francisco in Opera Parallèle’s new production that trims the libretto to two Acts, jettisons numerous minor characters, and attempts to bring clarity and direction to a narrative criticized for its bloat. Despite these revisions, the opera remains dramaturgically muddled in its tangential treatment of Milk’s story. Indeed, Wallace and Korie’s overly broad sweep of Milk’s life crams so much material into its runtime that they barely flesh out a character that matches the project’s operatic ambitions.

The music of Harvey Milk Reimagined appears to inhabit two distinct realms. During the opera’s ambitious ensemble scenes, the musical rhetoric often adopts an oratorio-like character that skirts active dramatic interactions and emphasizes choral commentary and narrative exposition. Some choral episodes do succeed: the integration of the Mourner’s Kaddish into young Harvey’s awakening foregrounds the intersectionality between his Jewish heritage and his nascent queer identity as foundational for his activism. Similarly, the solemn vigil scene at the opera’s close resonates with a gravitas and a musical grandeur befitting of the character’s tragic demise.

More often, however, Wallace’s dense ensembles feel theatrically diffuse in contrast to the dramatic stakes the libretto is attempting to address. Milk’s supposedly formative witnessing of the Stonewall Riots, for instance, is rendered with such perfunctory musical treatment that it lands more as a historical aside than a galvanizing political epiphany. And while Milk’s maneuverings within the San Francisco city board provides the substance needed to portray his political savvy in a biopic, Wallace’s musical scoring of such wordy discourse merely registers as dutiful reportage composed of awkwardly phrased operatic parlando.

Harvey Milk Reimagined does find emotional grounding in moments where its music transcends expository clutter and inhabits genuine operatic terrain. Wallace’s theatrical treatment breathes most naturally in the intimate scenes between Milk and his lover Scott Smith, and during Milk and Mayor Moscone’s tense discussion about the dangers of engaging in politics as a minority. Perhaps most striking, however, is the characterization of Dan White—the opera’s villain and easily its most fully realized dramatic figure. White’s descent into grievance and violence is charted with a credible musical arc, psychological shading, and vocal conviction that stand in sharp contrast to the underdeveloped trajectory afforded to Milk. In these moments, the opera reveals what it might have achieved with a sharper dramaturgical and musical focus.

If the score’s pacing, musical, and textual shortcomings blunted the opera’s emotional impact, the cast assembled by Opera Parallèle occasionally rose above the material’s limitations. Baritone Michael Kelly brings dignity to the title role, though the opera’s episodic rush through Milk’s transformation from closeted Wall Street analyst to Castro District activist intrinsically limits the range of his characterization. Kelly’s eventual assertion of his dual identity as both Jewish and gay echoes themes introduced early in the opera, but the moment is rendered with no more dramatic weight than the memorable opening exchange between young Milk (Curtis Resnick) and his mother (Catherine Cook). As Dan White, Christopher Oglesby delivered the opera’s most compelling performance, navigating the role’s punishingly high tessitura with striking ease and imbuing his psychologically charged solos with dramatic focus.

Cory Weaver

Among the supporting cast, Henry Benson made a strong vocal impression as Scott Smith with the ease and the fluency of his lyric tenor. Marnie Breckenridge impresses in a dual turn as Dianne Feinstein and a Castro sex worker, while bass Matt Boehler imparts authority and eloquence to his portrayal of Mayor George Moscone. Countertenor Matheus Coura lends the narrative’s otherworldly Messenger an ethereal grace, his final appearance during Milk’s assassination infusing the vigil with mournful solemnity. Soprano Chea Kang also distinguished herself in a haunting solo that gives voice to the grief shared by other marginalized communities in the wake of Milk’s assassination.

Director Brian Staufenbiel and set designer Jacquelyn Scott shaped a fluid production centered on rolling staircases that enabled seamless transitions across the story’s key locales, while David Murakami’s projections—ranging from abstract scenic imagery to archival footage—anchored the staging most effectively when portraying the historical and emotional landscape of Milk’s Castro. Nicole Paiement led the orchestra with authority and vitality a score that demanded traversal across an eclectic mix of musical styles.

Harvey Milk Reimagined ultimately exists in a state of creative tension between two competing ambitions: to comprehensively document the life of an important historic figure, and to explore his interior world through the vast expressive mechanisms of opera. In striving to accomplish both without a clearly delineated character arc, the piece ends up offering a fragmented portrait that lacks the depth or coherence needed to honor Milk’s legacy. At a moment when civil rights are being undermined, the value of retelling Milk’s story—a victim of hatred provoked by the mere act of living one’s identity openly—remains topical and politically urgent. Without a score or a libretto capable of developing a character out of the LGBTQ movement’s iconic civil rights activist, Wallace and Korie’s tribute falls short of the political and artistic vitality it seeks to embody.