Harvey Milk.

Richard Nixon earned himself an opera; so did Mahatma. Gandhi, so why not Harvey Milk? Why shouldn't one of the era's enduring symbols of gay martyrdom--and a great opera fan too--serve as the basis for a major work for the lyric stage? Harvey Milk, with music by Stewart Wallace and libretto by Michael Korie, is one of the more improbable succes d'estimates of the past few decades, yet maybe the opera house rather than the compact disc player is its natural habitat.

The subject, suggested by British opera director John Dew, was taken up as a three-way coproduction that was launched at the always-enterprising Houston Grand Opera in 1995, was moved to the New York City Opera for a poorly received run, and, with some revisions, reappeared at the San Francisco Opera to critical approval and sold-out houses in November 1996. This recording was made with San Francisco Opera forces in studio sessions concurrent with the Bay Area run.

It is, of course, something of a miracle that in these economically conservative times for record companies, the opera even saw release on a major label and in a performance that has definitive written all over it.

But without director Christopher Alden's incendiary production and the wide gay community appeal--a candlelight march followed one of the San Francisco performances--Harvey Milk the album seems much less gripping. Korie researched his libretto among the friends and associates of the former San Francisco supervisor, Who was slain (along with Mayor George Moscone) by fellow board member Dan White in November 1978, and the facts are part of the saga of one of the greatest acts of personal and political liberation in American history.

The three acts take Milk from his youth (in standing room at the Met and bouts of furtive sex) to the Stonewall riots, the act of coming out, and the turbulent Castro Street of the early 1970s. But the score and the libretto aim so hard to offer a rounded portrait of their subject that they never penetrate to his essence. Wallace's eclectic score, mixing classical and pop idioms, fails just where you expect opera to trump the other performing arts--in expanding and heightening the key emotional moments. Here, for example, was a chance to deliver a soaring, unabashed love duet for two men (Milk and Scott Smith), yet Wallace's lyric gift seems oddly truncated. And the heavenly messenger who, at the end, informs the protagonist that he will not enter the heaven of gay liberation is a contrivance that comes close to pure kitsch.

Oddly, the wretched Dan White (a brilliant performance by Raymond Very, whose Irish tenor is just right) emerges more fully conceived than does Milk. Korie hates the assassin so much that he provides him with motivations and feelings that resonate. The librettist hints, also, at the unlikable aspects of Milk's character--such as his gift for political manipulation--but refrains from exploring them in depth.

Still, the performance, conducted masterfully by the San Francisco Opera's music director, Donald Runnicles, is staggering throughout, with a notable contribution by baritone Robert Orth in the title role. If you were there in the 1970s, the release might strike you as an original original cast album.