New York (AP) — Charles Blow was in the audience at the premiere of the opera based on his memoir “Close the Fire in My Bones” and his childhood by an older cousin. I remember seeing a scene depicting sexual abuse.
“To be honest, it was more unpleasant to see everyone looking at me. They were so nervous about it that they were worried about my reaction.”
They didn’t have to worry, Blow said in an interview. “When I wrote the book, I was already dealing with them all,” he said. “I don’t have the trauma that many expect from me.”
Blow, a New York Times columnist, will reappear in the audience when the opera opens the Metropolitan Opera season on September 27th. This will be the first opera performance at home since the pandemic shutdown 18 months ago.
More historic is the fact that the “fire” score by jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard will be the first opera by a black musician to be unveiled at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time in 138 years.
“Of course, you’re proud to be labeled with it,” Blanchard said after a rehearsal last week. “But I know I’m not the first person to be qualified, so I have a particular sense of sadness, not guilt.”
For example, Blanchard said he heard the first one-act opera “Highway 1” performed by black composer William Grant Still at the Opera Theater of Saint Louis this summer, when “Fire” premiered in 2019. Said. 1963.
“I’m sitting there listening to it,” he said.
According to Blanchard, OTSL artistic director James Robinson wrote another opera after the first “champion” based on the life of boxer Emile Griffith was premiered in 2013. bottom. When his wife Robin Burgess recommended reading Blow’s memoirs, Blanchard said it struck a chord.
In his book, Blow, now 51, was a shy and sensitive child in the countryside of Louisiana, with four macho brothers, a benevolent child drunk for his father, and a gun. He explains that he grew up in poverty as a warm and hard-working mother. Her purse.
Born in New Orleans, Blanchard said: “I knew a lot about its growth while I wanted to be a musician, walked to the bus stop on the weekends, put on my glasses with my horn, and the other boys were playing soccer on the street. It wasn’t a popular look. “
To write the libretto, Blanchard hired his friend and frequent collaborator, filmmaker Kasi Lemmons. She had never written an opera script, but said she was on the “bucket list” of what she wanted to achieve someday.
“I didn’t know what the normal process was,” Lemons said. “I didn’t even know that the script would go first. I thought maybe the music came first.”
She turned to Robinson for advice. Robinson made the definitive proposal that “in opera you can sing anything.” Inspired by it, she created two characters known as fate and loneliness to accompany Blow at various points in his life. She also has a child playing the role of young Charles on stage in various places along with an adult character.
Lemons said he was nervous about how Blow would react to some of her inventions. “OK, I wrote this guy’s loneliness as a character. That’s pretty annoying.
“On the other hand, the way he talked about loneliness in the book was very clear,” she said.
After she handed the script to Blanchard, he set it to almost unchanged music. The score is imbued with jazz rhythms and is filled with lyrical passages, including authentic arias of some characters.
The production of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is co-directed by Robinson and Camille A. Brown. Music director Yannick Neze-Seguin met, starring baritone Will Riverman as Adult Charles, soprano Latonia Moore as mother, soprano Angel Blue as Destiny, Ronellines, and girlfriend Greta. To lead. The final performance on Saturday afternoon, October 23, will include eight performances that will be screened live in HD at cinemas around the world.
This work is a joint commission of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Los Angeles Opera, which will be announced next spring.
In his memoirs, Blow describes himself as bisexual and frankly writes about having an opera-dramatized homoerotic fantasy through a dance sequence choreographed by Brown.
Lemons wants to be able to draw inspiration from his story by looking past the trauma blow that the audience has endured as a young man.
“It’s very sad, but not sad is Charles Blow,” she said. “The highlight of the story is how to get power out of pain.”
Blanchard repeats that view. “The mere fact that Charles has had such success in his life shows how much he has overcome,” he said.
“Hopefully some young children coming to this opera will see it. Hopefully it can really change the lives of some people.”
Copyright 2021 AP communication. all rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.
The season begins with the first ever opera by a black composer | National News
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