MOR: Tell us about how you approached writing this piece.

JH: When Mina asked me to compose this piece for Music of Remembrance, I said yes right away. I felt deeply honored and hugely challenged. She was giving me the opportunity to create something very meaningful on a subject that is rarely discussed: the persecution of homosexuals during the Holocaust.

It has deep resonance for me as a gay man, somebody who grew up in fear of being mocked, ridiculed and physically harmed because of my sexual orientation. I had no idea the extent of the persecution of gays during the Nazi regime until I read the materials I could find. When I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, everything became very vivid, real and tangible to me. There are some excellent books on the subject, but it was when I saw the documentary Paragraph 175 that things really clicked for me.

I'm an opera composer-a theater man-so I'm always on the lookout for the story when I'm asked to create a new piece. (That holds true for opera, song and chamber music.) While I had been searching for personal accounts, poetry, and stories about those years, the documentary made it clear to me why I couldn't find those stories easily: Homosexuals were still considered criminals even after the war was over and the camps were closed. The title came from a line in the documentary: "You could be arrested for a look or a touch." Under the Nazis, innuendo was enough to convict a person.

Homosexual behavior had been a crime in Germany since the late 1800s (Paragraph 175), and that law was in effect until 25 years after the war. There was an enormous shame about it all, and the gay men who'd been in the camps and then released did not want to speak about it. Nor did the public want to hear about it. Many of them went into hiding, got married, ran away. It's only in the past twenty years that the subject has been discussed. The documentary brought all of that to light. It's brilliant, and the interviews are heartbreaking because they are real, true, and spoken by the men who lived through it.

It became obvious that I would want to base the piece on true stories from the documentary. So, I needed permission from the makers of the film (which I received), and I needed a librettist to find the connecting material-the overall story-for the piece. I turned right away to Gene Scheer, with whom I've written two big song cycles as well as a one-act opera (To Hell and Back) and currently a chamber opera for the Houston Grand Opera and San Francisco Opera (Last Acts).

Mina had called our attention to the journal of Manfred Lewin on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website, which was key in finding a throughline. Manfred Lewin and Gad Beck were lovers in Berlin in the '40s. Both were taken, but Gad survived. Suddenly the idea of an actor being part of it came in. We'd have two characters-one alive (Gad, an 80-year-old man, portrayed by an actor) and one a ghost (Manfred, a 19-year-old gay man, who sings)-and through them we'd be able to tell these stories.

The story boiled down to this: Gad survived and wants to forget. Manfred, who did not survive, wants only to be remembered-to know that his life and his story counted for something.

MOR: Musically, how does this piece sound? Are you making references to music of the era? What's behind your choice of instrumentation?

JH: It's very important, when telling a story through music, to have a sense of musical character-a musical profile-and that we see what was lost. I definitely wanted to portray the youthful optimism of Manfred and did that through the romantic lyricism of songs from the late 1930s, as well as a wild dance piece reminiscent of that period in Berlin when the city was a kind of gay mecca. That is juxtaposed against the world-weariness of Gad, who has witnessed and experienced unspeakable horror and prejudice.

For instrumentation, I chose a kind of piano quintet, including flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. That gives me a range of colors as well as lyric and percussive possibilities to work with.

MOR: You're known for your ability to write music singers love to sing. What has it been like working with your baritone for this piece, Morgan Smith?

JH: I write for the character and in service to the drama, but it is incredibly helpful to know the personality and voice of the person I'm writing for. I live in my ears, but I'm also very visual, so I try to picture how things will look as I compose.

Morgan is a very gifted singing actor with wonderful charisma and power. I was very impressed with his wish to create the character of Manfred and to explore unfamiliar and emotionally daunting territory. He flew down to San Francisco specifically so that we could meet and I could hear him sing and get to know him. I love the range of his voice and his openness.

He was also the one who suggested Julian Patrick could portray Gad. Julian seemed perfect for it and Mina was very excited, as was I. He brings with him a rich legacy of opera and music theater, and I think we'll have a great time working together.

MOR: What are you hoping for as a response to the work?

JH: I hope they will listen and allow themselves to be swept into the music and the story: its joy, heartbreak, horror...and hope. I hope they will be entertained, moved, and that perhaps the piece will open a new dialogue.