In a season that takes an unusual interest in Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas (the Off Broadway hit Gross Indecency, which recently completed a run at L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum, and London's The Judas Kiss, which comes to Broadway in April), there is now an opera that uses the Wilde-Douglas love affair as a springboard to a related story.

Night Passage, with music by Robert Moran and libretto by James Skofield, will have its world premiere production April 3 and 4 at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, CA.

The opera is the story of the "witchhunt" that followed Wilde's arrest on April 5, 1895 for homosexual behavior -- and the 600 men who left England that same night on a boat for the Continent in an effort to escape the authorities.

"Night Passage is an attempt to imagine the incredible panic that compelled these men to just pick up and leave England and go into exile," said Skofield in an interview in Buzz magazine.

The opera is being produced by the Gay Men's Chorus of L.A. The director is Robert Robinson. For more information, call the Alex Theatre at (818) 243-2539.

-- By Rebecca Paller