‘Fellow Travelers’ set in McCarthy era, resonates across the decades

The McCarthy-era “lavender scare” witch hunts of the 1950s is the backdrop for “Fellow Travelers,” the critically acclaimed opera with music by Gregory Spears and libretto by Greg Pierce.

And it is this opera, based on Thomas Mallon’s best-selling novel of the same name, which Lyric Unlimited — the education/new initiatives arm of Lyric Opera — is presenting in four performances, March 17-25 at the Athenaeum Theatre.

Directed by Kevin Newbury, the opera (in its Chicago premiere) stars Jonas Hacker (as Timothy Laughlin) and Joseph Lattanzi (as Hawkins Fuller), two Washington, D.C.-based government workers whose “sexually subversive” love affair plays out amid the social prejudices of 1950s America.

Newbury says the Athenaeum Theatre is the perfect setting for the opera’s milieu.

“Well, this building feels like it could be used on the set of ‘Mad Men,’” Newbury says. “It feels like our lead characters could’ve come here to see a show in the 1950s.”

And even though the story is set in the ’50s, it’s still relevant today, according to Newbury.

“I really love the love duet when they first fall in love. We just don’t see that enough of that. I had to see myself through straight love stories almost my entire life, and now to see two men falling in love and very intimate and sexual on stage together is just something we don’t see enough of. Even today.”

For tickets and a complete performance schedule for “Fellow Travelers” (sung in English, with English supertitles), visit lyricopera.org.