Harvey Milk's name returned to the headlines this past summer after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the name of the slain gay rights advocate who served in the U.S. Navy removed from a naval ship.

But Milk's legacy lives on in other ways, including an opera about his life that carries a powerful story of its own.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown reports from San Francisco

for our ongoing coverage of the intersection of health and arts,

part of our Canvas series.

Remember this moment,

this warm night in June. It's the story of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk.

His sexual and political awakening.

His impactful life is the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California

in 1977, serving on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors.

And his violent death, along with Mayor George Moscone, assassinated by former supervisor Dan White. The opera Harvey Milk was first performed in 1995.

Many years later, composer Stuart Wallace took it on again.

I rewrote the whole thing from the first page, from the blank page.

So while it is the same opera in a way, there's nothing to say.

Harvey Milk reimagined, also with the libretto by Michael Coory, was presented earlier this summer by the San Francisco group Opera Parallel. In the new version of the opera, the story

and number of characters are slimmed down,

the pacing faster.

Changes Wallace says he'd long wanted to make.

We all look for that in our lives to get a chance to redo things.

And, you know, I was, when we premiered Harvey Milk, I was 34 years old.

I'll be 65 this year.

So hopefully I've learned a few things in the interim.

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