were mixed into live performances during the work's 1989 premiere, co-produced by the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival and Dance Theater Workshop, with direction and choreography by Ann Carlson. John Rockwell in The New York Times said of it, "Kabbalah may prove ultimately more important for what it promises than for what it provides. But even what it provides has its real merits." Harvey Milk Korie’s next collaboration with Stewart Wallace was the opera Harvey Milk, conceived as an epic opera in three acts and co-commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera, and San Francisco Opera. It depicts the life of the slain politician and gay-rights activist Harvey Milk. The first act (“The Closet”) represents Milk's early years as a closeted stock broker in New York, his arrest in central park, and his decision to depart for San Francisco with his lover Scott Smith in the wake of the Stonewall Rebellion. The second act (“The Castro”) charts Milk's transformation from a San Francisco camera store owner to an elected City Supervisor. The Third Act (“City Hall”) dramatizes his hardball-style politicking and head-butting with his assassin, fellow Supervisor Dan White. Milk's premonition of his death is shown in the aria “If a Bullet Should Enter My Brain...,” as he makes a tape recording of his last will just weeks before his murder by White. Sections of the actual recording were included in the score. The opera premiered on January 21, 1995 at the Houston Grand Opera and generated controversy over the first presentation of openly gay love scenes on the operatic stage. The Chicago Tribune called it "one of the best new operas in years" and The Independent’s Edward Seckerson wrote "the libretto is among the sharpest in contemporary opera". K. Robert Schwartz in The New York Times wrote “Harvey Milk is an unflinching in-your-face kind of opera, a work that examines not only Milk’s tragedy but the awakening of gay consciousness in America.” Performances followed at New York City Opera and San Francisco Opera. Joshua Kosman in The San Francisco Chronicle wrote of the SFO production, “By turns haunting and hilarious, brassy and mystically poetic, the libretto is a magnificent creation.” The opera was recorded by Teldec in 1998, with Donald Runnicles conducting. A concert work for soloists, chorus and orchestra, Kaddish for Harvey Milk, was reworked by the composer from forty-five minutes of text and