'Harvey Milk' is one of several late 20th-century operas to deal with figures from (comparatively) recent headlines. We see Harvey Milk's journey from a teenager in the standing room at the old Met, through his career as a closeted executive to the "Mayor of Castro Street," to becoming the first openly gay man elected to the San Francisco board of supervisors. The final, immensely powerful image of the opera portrays the young Harvey, still in the handcuffs from his arrest by an undercover cop he meets at the Met, watching the outpouring of love occasioned by his assassination and finally being released by his jailer. The work, a joint commission of three opera companies, was recorded after the final revisions for the San Francisco performances. The libretto uses a number of strategies to tell Milk's story, from the symbolic closet Harvey lives in during the brilliant first act to a fairly straightforward realism for the scenes in San Francisco. The music covers a range from Broadway to the clusters of the avant garde as appropriate to the dramatic situation. The large cast performs with great dedication and the forces of the San Francisco Opera make another valuable contribution to recorded opera.

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'Harvey Milk' is one of several late 20th-century operas to deal with figures from (comparatively) recent headlines. We see Harvey Milk's journey from a teenager in the standing room at the old Met, through his career as a closeted executive to the "Mayor of Castro Street," to becoming the first openly gay man elected to the San Francisco board of supervisors. The final, immensely powerful image of the opera portrays the young Harvey, still in the handcuffs from his arrest by an undercover cop he meets at the Met, watching the outpouring of love occasioned by his assassination and finally being released by his jailer. The work, a joint commission of three opera companies, was recorded after the final revisions for the San Francisco performances. The libretto uses a number of strategies to tell Milk's story, from the symbolic closet Harvey lives in during the brilliant first act to a fairly straightforward realism for the scenes in San Francisco. The music covers a range from Broadway to the clusters of the avant garde as appropriate to the dramatic situation. The large cast performs with great dedication and the forces of the San Francisco Opera make another valuable contribution to recorded opera.