Terrence Blanchard Takes on the Met

I suppose I first became aware of Terence Blanchard through the music he composed for films made by Spike Lee. These served well for setting context. Nevertheless, none of the selections left me with an urge to listen “in the foreground,” rather than appreciating their utility as background. Prior to piquing Lee’s interest, Blanchard had replaced Wynton Marsalis as trumpeter in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1982. However, he never really signified in the days when I was just beginning to build up a collection of jazz albums.

Here in San Francisco his association with opera was first established when Opera Parallèle presented the second production of his opera Champion in collaboration with SFJAZZ in February of 2016. Due to personal issues with the Robert N. Miner Auditorium in the SFJAZZ Center, I did not attend that production. As a result, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD provided me with my first experience with Blanchard as an opera composer when the 2021 performance of Fire Shut Up in My Bones was broadcast on local Public Television.

This was the first time that an opera by a black composer had been performed at the Met; and it was given “pride of place” to serve as the first offering of the 2021–2022 season. Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted, and all the performers on stage were black. The protagonist Charles was sung by Will Liverman, the multiple role of Destiny, Loneliness, and an apparition was taken by soprano Angel Blue, and the role of Charles’ mother was taken by soprano Latonia Moore.

While I appreciate the significance of this production in charting the progress of Black History, I have to confess that the video account of this production left me cold. The libretto by Kasi Lemmons was drawn from the text of a memoir, also titled Fire Shut Up in My Bones, by Charles M. Blow. While Lemmons may have captured the unfolding of the critical events in Blow’s text, the fit between the resulting libretto and Blanchard’s music did not result in a compelling account of those events. Indeed, long stretches in the music account for scenes that depart significantly from the core narrative, almost as if the flow of that narrative had to be softened with extended “entertainment breaks.”

Fire Shut Up in My Bones may be recognized as a significant event in the history of the Metropolitan Opera, but I cannot help but wonder whether the opera itself will be granted similar significance in decades to come.