[11] In June 2024, Opera Parallèle was scheduled to present the West Coast premiere of Fellow Travelers in San Francisco in a new production directed by Brian Staufenbiel.

[12][needs update] The opera is set in Washington D.C., during the McCarthy era of the 1950s and focuses on the "lavender scare", a witch hunt and mass firings of gay people from the United States government.

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote in The New York Times following its world premiere in Cincinnati, "The opening act is a near-perfect example of fast-flowing musical drama.

But the large clusters of audience members who stayed behind in the lobby after Sunday's performance discussing and analyzing the show suggest that — at this moment in time, in particular — it offered much more than mere entertainment.

Still, originality just comes through sometimes, as the composer Gregory Spears demonstrates in his personal, boldly quirky score for the wrenching, and sadly timely, opera Fellow Travelers.