Lou Harrison, the beloved California composer, would have turned 100 this spring, and arguably the most important centenary event will come Tuesday at Walt Disney Concert Hall with a sold-out staged production of his long-evolving opera “Young Caesar.”

“Young Caesar” was especially dear to Harrison’s heart. When the Encounters music series in Pasadena asked for an opera, Harrison was at a loss for a subject until his partner, Bill Colvig, proposed in 1969 that he explore a gay subject. The result was what may well have been the first overtly male gay opera in history, complete with a love affair between the teenage Julius Caesar, as an emissary from Rome, and Nicomedes, the king of distant Bithynia, on the south shore of the Black Sea. It even had a gay orgy, depicted with puppets.

The opera was a testimony to Harrison and Colvig’s then-new love, speculates Yuval Sharon, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s artist-collaborator, stage director of “Young Caesar” and leader of the performance group the Industry. The Industry is presenting “Young Caesar” with the L.A. Phil New Music Group and Harrison House Music, Arts and Ecology in Joshua Tree.

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