This weekend, San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre broadened its own horizons and premiered its first opera, “Sextet: An Exploration of Gay Male Desire . . . Set to Music” by local composer Nicolas Reveles.

At the mere mention of “gay opera” I imagine anguished cries of, “Is nothing sacred?” from certain sectors of the musical world. If your experience of opera is limited to the bodice-ripping plots of verismo—a tenor and a baritone loutishly fighting over a busty soprano—then gay opera seems oxymoronic.

Sextet rehearsal. Pictured (l-r): David McBean

Noah Longton, Will Earl Spanheimer, Nicolas

Reveles, Abdiel Gonzalez, Matthew Starkey

and Enrique Toral.

^{Courtesy photo}

But wait. Verismo is only one blink of an eyelash in the grand (and not-so-grand) history of opera. And for the record, the gay side of opera has been present almost since the beginning of opera in the early 17^th century. Yes—I have done my homework!

Just a few years after Claudio Monteverdi started the opera ball rolling with “Orfeo,” Giacomo Castorero staged his “Pericle Effeminato” (Effeminate Pericles,1653), and Aurelio Aureli put on “Alcibiade” (1680), two operas that depicted gay life in ancient Rome.

In the early 18^th century, the superstar divas were castrated males (the infamous castrati) who played gods and warriors and could outsing any female soprano in her own range. When this questionable medical practice ended, composers turned to cross-dressing as the newest fad, butching up mezzo-sopranos to appear as young, randy males.

In Mozart’s celebrated “The Marriage of Figaro,” for example, a mezzo-soprano impersonating a man seduces the women of the castle to make the Count Almaviva (always a husky baritone) look stupid. Even Richard Strauss at the turn of the last century kept up this tradition in his comedy “Der Rosenkavalier.” Its musically sumptutous love scene featuring the three leading ladies (one in male drag) is one of the most famous in all opera.

In the early 19^th century, in “Semiramide” and “Tancredi,” Gioacchino Rossini cast women as generals and warriors, known as “armor roles,” and their love interests were always other females in the cast.

By the time we get to the 20^th century, gay opera becomes front page material. Gay composer Benjamin Britten created two well-known, overtly gay operas: “Billy Budd” and “Death in Venice,” the former an all-male work in which a handsome young sailor is brought down by a villain who cannot live with his sexual attraction to the younger man. “Death in Venice” vividly sensualizes the protagonist’s desperate infatuation with the athletic young Polish lad, Tadzio, which the original novella’s author Thomas Mann tried to obscure in a mist of aesthetic obfuscation.

In 1995 American composer Stewart Wallace was commissioned by three major American opera companies (Houston, New York City and San Francisco) to write “Harvey Milk,” a work based on the life of San Francisco’s martyred gay politician of the 1970s. In June, 2010, Fort Worth Opera premiered Jorge Martin’s opera “Before Night Falls,” based on the life of gay Cuban writer-activist Renaldo Arenas. The opera’s title is that of Arenas’ best-known book and also of the bio-pic (starring Xavier Bardem) made of his life.

This gay-opera-through-the-centuries prologue brings us to Reveles’ “Sextet,” which boasts neither literary nor historical pedigree, although like Richard Wagner, Reveles wrote his own libretto. Reveles has six male singers inhabit six dramatically unrelated scenes that visit themes of hedonism, desire, religion, and trust.Three of the scenes hover languidly on the shoals of gay domestic life, although the arch Manhattan dinner party gets a dramatic jolt with an unexpected visit from Jesus—sung with calm authority by baritone Abdiel Gonzalez clad in predictable Sunday School pageant attire—while the Rapture takes off outside the dining room windows.

For its sheer audacity and clever surprise ending (which I will not give away), the unabashedly explicit gay bath house scene may get this opera into the record books. Prior to “Sextet,” I do not believe the question “Anybody here got poppers?” has been set to recitative, and the stage "action" leaves nothing to the imagination.

“Walt’s Boy,” a touching setting of Walt Whitman poetry (“Calamus Poems”) sung with ardor and intensity by baritone Will Earl Spanheimer, proved the most moving scene as well as Reveles’ most skillful writing, although it kept calling to mind John Adams’ more expansive “Wound-Dresser” (also based on Whitman’s poetry) for baritone and orchestra.

Reveles’ musical idiom relies on that time-honored, predictable arioso style that has served durably from Gian Carlo Menotti to Jake Heggie: essentially tonal with just a touch of dissonant complexity when dramatically appropriate. His compact orchestration of piano, violin and cello provided a wide range of color and depth, and I think I heard a nascent piano trio in the accompaniment to the third scene, “The Ugly Duckling.” Kudos to cellist Cliff Thrasher and violinist/violist Lee Wolfe for bravura playing throughout the work. The composer presided ably at the piano.

Tenor Enrique Toral’s extended soliloquy in “The Ugly Duckling” demonstrated a vibrant instrument and telling sense of declamation. David McBean’s deft domestic personae, alternately coy or shrill, punched up the sagging dialogue in various scenes, although his vocal approach suggested more popular ballad than operatic aria.

Matthew Starkey and Noah Longton brought more dramatic than vocal weight to the cast, a comely assemblage that might have been chosen by the French artists Pierre et Gilles for one of their erotic tableaux. Cynthia Stokes’ efficient direction made the best possible use of the compact Diversionary stage. If Peter G. Kalivas’ elaborate choreography of the “Ugly Ducking” scene had not been obscured by such a heavy scrim, it could have been much more engaging.

In apparent tribute to the late Louise Nevelson, Robin Sanford Roberts' monochromatic, floor-to-ceiling, ivory wall installation, a clever assemblage of chairs, windows, and empty picture frames, provided an eye-pleasing backdrop to each scene. Corey Johnston’s minimal costumes—and they could not have been more minimal in the towels-only bath house scene—served the action nicely. McBean's multi-hued print frock in the final scene would have made the Biblical Joseph's coat-of-many-colors seem nondescript by comparison.

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