Composer Terence Blanchard at the Metropolitan Opera, which opens its season September 27 with his “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” the first opera in its history by a Black composer. Photo: Wayne Lawrence / New York Times
“The Metropolitan Opera … opened in 1883, and in its 138 years has put on some 300 titles. Not one has been by a Black composer. Until now,” writes Zachary Woolfe in Thursday’s (9/23) New York Times. “Closed for a year and a half by the pandemic and rocked by the nationwide uprising for racial justice, the company will reopen on Monday with ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones,’ by Terence Blanchard, a jazz trumpeter and composer best known for scoring a host of Spike Lee films. ‘It’s a phenomenal honor,’ … Blanchard, 59, said… ‘But at the same time it’s bittersweet…. I’m not the first qualified person to be here.’ … [William Grant] Still and other Black composers … submitted [operas to the Met]. But finally it was the Met … contacting Blanchard, rather than the other way around…. [The opera’s] lushness and lyricism, a sophisticated yet accessible clarity, has long been evident in Blanchard’s jazz and film work … ‘I don’t want to be the token,’ Blanchard added. ‘I want to be the turnkey.’ ” Premiered by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2019, the opera is based on Charles M. Blow’s memoir, with a libretto by Kasi Lemmons.
