Fire Shut Up in My Bones (Opera)

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    ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ Review: A Met Milestone Returns

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    After making history as the Metropolitan Opera’s first work by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard’s “Fire” is back — with its showstopping step dance.The Metropolitan Opera premiere of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” on Sept. 27, 2021, was a momentous event. Doubly so: “Fire” was the company’s first staged opera after an 18-month pandemic closure, and it was, after 138 years, its first work by a Black composer.The opera, with a score by Terence Blanchard and a libretto by Kasi Lemmons, took on some of the grandeur and excitement of that moment. The raucous fraternity step dance that opens the third act brought down the house.That step dance still stopped the show on Monday evening, when “Fire” returned to the Met. Two and a half years later, the work is a test case. The company has sharply increased its diet of contemporary operas — some of which, including “Fire,” sold very well as new productions. But how will these operas perform when they’re brought back, without the same promotional push?On Monday, at least, the audience seemed robust and, as it was during the initial run, notably diverse. And “Fire” remains a heartfelt piece, emanating a touching if vague sadness. But without the exhilarating sense of occasion it had at its Met premiere, the opera’s shortcomings were clearer.Based on the New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow’s memoir of his turbulent upbringing in Louisiana, “Fire” is a progression of episodes — some upbeat, some forlorn. It takes the form of a search: The lonely Charles, his psyche wounded as a child by his cousin’s sexual abuse and his mother’s real but distracted love, looks for belonging and healing.He tries church, fraternity membership, his siblings, a woman, another woman, but none offer what he’s seeking; all want him to be different than he is. Only after a hasty, therapy-speak conclusion in the final minutes, presided over by an ethereal choir and the voice of his younger self, can he finally accept himself and sing, “Now my life begins.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jaap van Zweden Bids Farewell, and Other Classical Highlights

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      The Philharmonic’s maestro ends his tenure, Igor Levit comes to Carnegie Hall, and the Metropolitan Opera takes a chance on reviving two recent hits.The New York Philharmonic’s spring gala is not usually of much musical interest. It tends toward mild fare — just enough to keep the donors happy before dinner and dancing.But this year, the playing will draw closer attention. The gala, on April 24, features the only appearance this season by Gustavo Dudamel, the Philharmonic’s next music director. He will take part in the celebration of the orchestra’s education programs, including its signature Young People’s Concerts, which are turning 100.The Philharmonic has been careful not to have its Dudamel-led future step too much on its less starry present. This season also brings the final months of Jaap van Zweden’s brief tenure as music director, which will begin on his favored ground: the classics.A mid-March program of Mozart’s elegant Piano Concerto No. 17 (with Conrad Tao as soloist) and Beethoven’s deathless Fifth Symphony is such a sure audience pleaser that the Philharmonic is confidently giving it four performances, rather than the usual three.Van Zweden led the orchestra in Beethoven’s Fifth in October 2015, a few months before he got the music director job. I wrote then that “conducting this imaginative and playing this varied don’t appear at Geffen Hall every week.” His meticulousness didn’t come off as mannered, as it sometimes does. The inner two movements felt especially inventive, and I’ll be listening for whether the whole thing has the polish and momentum that have tended to elude the orchestra recently.A few days later, van Zweden will turn his attention to the new, as the Philharmonic plays fresh pieces by Tan Dun — a concerto for the principal trombonist, Joseph Alessi, called “Three Muses in Video Game” — and Joel Thompson.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      North Carolina Radio Station Won’t Ban Met Opera Broadcasts After All

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      The station, which had called the Met’s newer operas unsuitable because of their “difficult music” and “adult themes and harsh language,” reversed course.The music director of a nonprofit North Carolina classical radio station said on Thursday that the station would reverse course and air several contemporary operas being performed by the Metropolitan Opera this season that the station had originally said were unsuitable for broadcast, citing their “adult themes and harsh language.”“It was a very hard decision,” Emily Moss, the music director of WCPE, a nonprofit station based in Wake Forest, said in an interview. “It’s been a hard day and a hard week.”The reversal came after the station faced widespread criticism.The Met, the nation’s leading opera company, has been staging more contemporary work in recent seasons as part of a push to attract new and more diverse audiences; the company has found that these newer works draw more first-time ticket buyers than the classics do.But Deborah S. Proctor, the general manager of WCPE, took issue with new works planned for the current season in a survey she sent to listeners on Aug. 31.“This coming season, the Metropolitan Opera has chosen several operas which are written in a nonclassical music style, have adult themes and language, and are in English,” she wrote. “I feel they aren’t suitable for broadcast on our station.”In the survey, Proctor cited her problems with several of the Met’s offerings this season.She described the violence in Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking,” the death row opera that opened the season. She cited the “non-Biblical” sources of the libretto of John Adams’s “El Niño,” and the suicidal themes in Kevin Puts’s “The Hours,” which is based on the Michael Cunningham novel and the Oscar-winning film it inspired. She wrote that “Florencia en el Amazona,” by the Mexican composer Daniel Catán, was “simply outside of the bounds of our musical format guidelines.” And she said that both Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” and Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” contain “offensive language plainly audible to everyone.”“We want parents to know that they can leave our station playing for their children because our broadcasts are without mature themes or foul language,” she wrote in the letter. “We must maintain the trust of listeners.”The station decided last season not to broadcast Blanchard’s “Champion.”The Met, which has said it follows Federal Communications Commission guidelines regarding profanity and language, said it was happy with the change of course. “We’re pleased that opera fans in North Carolina will be able to hear all 27 of our scheduled broadcasts this season,” the Met said in a statement.The station’s letter, and the survey attached to it, received scant attention before reaching social media last week. Rhiannon Giddens, a North Carolina native who shared the Pulitzer Prize this year with Michael Abels for their opera “Omar,” wrote an open letter voicing her displeasure over the station’s stance and noted that challenging adult themes are staples of many of the most popular operas of the past.“The Met broadcasts are the only way many people get to hear the productions, which are situated in New York and priced way out of many people’s budgets,” Giddens wrote. “Radio is supposed to be egalitarian and an equalizer, not used as a weapon, as you are doing.”The station reversed course after receiving feedback from the public and holding internal conversations.“We really value being safe for a general audience, especially children,” Moss said in the interview. “But one of our core values is that we are a refuge from the political and troubles of the world and we are returning to that value.” More

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      The Maestro Wore Blue: Bringing Pizazz to the Pit at the Met

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      Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, dressed in a blazing sapphire jacket and trim black pants, stood before a mirror backstage on a recent afternoon and smiled.“Oh my God, it’s so good,” he said, waving his baton. “I love it so much.”There were three days until the opening of Puccini’s “La Bohème,” and Nézet-Séguin, surrounded by a small team of tailors, designers and assistants, was offering feedback on his attire, which had been designed by the Met’s costume shop.His outfit was modeled on one worn onstage by a band leader in Franco Zeffirelli’s classic production. Could the golden braid that dangled from his right shoulder be fastened, so it did not create a distraction in the pit? Was the jacket comfortable enough to accommodate the sweeping gestures that the music demanded? And should there be more red, or maybe gold?The Met’s costume shop has designed outfits for Nézet-Séguin for eight productions, including this jacket for “Bohème.”“The more unusual elements,” he said, “the more fun for the audience.”Since the Met returned from the long pandemic shutdown, in the fall of 2021, Nézet-Séguin has been on a mission to challenge sartorial conventions, wearing eye-catching outfits designed by the Met’s costume shop in eight productions. There is limited space to make a statement; the designers focus on his back, since that is what most audience members will see.“We want to get some attention but not be too distracting,” said Robert Bulla, the Met’s assistant head costumer. “Nothing too obnoxious, but something that occasionally catches the light.”A conductor’s look book: clockwise from top left, “Champion,” “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” “The Hours” and “Lohengrin.”Nézet-Séguin sports a black-and-white hooded jacket modeled on a vintage Everlast boxing robe for Terence Blanchard’s “Champion,” an opera about the boxer Emile Griffith that had its Met premiere this month. (At the start of the second act, he enters the pit wearing the hood and boxing gloves, but removing both to conduct.)For “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which opened the season in 2021, Nézet-Séguin wanted to wear something special. The opera’s costume designer, Paul Tazewell, suggested this fireworks pattern.Rose Callahan/Metropolitan OperaHe wore a stained-glass pattern on his jacket for a 2021 revival of Puccini’s “Tosca,” which opens in the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome. And he switched from green to red to white shirts in Wagner’s “Lohengrin” this season, mimicking the look of the choristers, whose robes changed colors throughout the show.Nézet-Séguin said his outfits helped strengthen the bond between the pit and the stage.“You don’t want to ignore the orchestra,” he said. “If the conductor is there and seen, I think that helps the connection. It’s much more integrated.”At work in the costume shop. The jacket being constructed echoes one worn by a band leader onstage in the production.The costumes are also part of his efforts to make opera, which has long had a reputation for conservatism, more exciting and accessible.“We have to be more modern and approachable,” he said. “We want to welcome everybody.”While earlier music directors at the Met, all men, favored white tie and tails, Nézet-Séguin, who has held the post since 2018, has long had a more eclectic style, both in his clothes and appearance. He has bleached-blond hair and wears a diamond earring and several gold rings. He is fond of performing in clothes by designers like the Canadian Marie Saint Pierre and can be seen onstage in red-soled Christian Louboutin shoes.“The more unusual elements,” Nézet-Séguin said, “the more fun for the audience.”As the Met prepared to reopen its doors to the public after the pandemic shutdown in 2021, Nézet-Séguin felt it was time for a change.The Met was preparing to open the season with Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” the first work by a Black composer in the company’s history. Nézet-Séguin wanted to wear something to reflect the importance of the moment. The costume designer for “Fire,” Paul Tazewell, suggested a fireworks pattern, with flashes of red, indigo, teal and orange.“To be plain dressed — it just felt wrong to me,” Nézet-Séguin said.Beyond white tie and tails. “We want to get some attention but not be too distracting,” Robert Bulla, an assistant head costumer at the Met, said.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesThe designs often riff on an opera’s central themes. For Kevin Puts’s “The Hours,” based on the 1998 novel and the 2002 film it inspired, he wore a floral pattern, a nod to the work’s many references to flowers.Comfort is a priority — the designers want to ensure that he feels unhindered, and they use lightweight and stretchable fabric for flexibility and to absorb sweat. The costume shop often produces several of each jacket so he can change into a fresh one between acts.Some operas are more challenging than others. The team struggled to come up with an idea for “Bohème” before recalling that the production includes a scene in which a band leader guides a procession of soldiers across the stage.Nézet-Séguin, who painted his nails fuchsia for “Champion,” sometimes adds his own touches.“It’s good to be breaking this mold of what everyone thinks classical music and opera is,” Bulla said. “Some people say it’s taken a long time to start this evolution process. But at least it’s evolving.”Nézet-Séguin sometimes adds his own touches. He painted his nails fuchsia for “Champion,” to match the purple robe worn onstage by Ryan Speedo Green, who plays Griffith. And he said he was eager for a day when the Met orchestra musicians would be allowed to dress with more variety. (The dress code demands tuxedos or long, flowing black clothes for evening performances.)“It’s baby steps,” he said. “When I make statements like this, mentalities can evolve. We have to think more creatively and ergonomically. This is only the beginning.” More

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      Classical Music to See and Hear in Spring 2023

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      This spring, Gustavo Dudamel, the Philharmonic’s next music director, conducts the big deal symphony, the Met Opera stages Terence Blanchard’s “Champion”; and in Chicago, Riccardo Muti says farewell.It was a hint about as subtle as a siren when the New York Philharmonic announced its current season a year ago: Gustavo Dudamel, the superstar conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, would be coming to New York as a guest in May 2023 to lead Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.One of the repertory’s most sprawling and profound works, Mahler’s Ninth has been played by the Philharmonic almost exclusively under the batons of its music directors. It’s not an assignment the orchestra gives rising hotshots or conductors it sees once a decade. It’s the kind of musically knotty, deeply emotional score you want led by the artists closest to you.That was just one of many suggestions that Dudamel, 42, would, before too long, join the ranks of New York music directors, a group that has included eminences like Mahler, Toscanini, Bernstein and Boulez. And so it came to pass: Earlier this month, the Philharmonic said that he would succeed Jaap van Zweden in the position, for a five-year term beginning — because of classical music’s oddly glacial planning cycles — in the 2026-27 season.But before all that comes Mahler’s Ninth, which Dudamel has convincingly, with tenderness and naturally unfolding intensity, recorded with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The three New York performances, May 19-21, were already sure to be well attended, given the famous conductor and the beloved piece. Now, since the concerts will be Dudamel’s first appearances on the Philharmonic’s podium since the announcement, these will be some of the hottest tickets in town this spring.When Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2021–22 season, in a run that sold out several performances, it was a landmark: the first time the company had put on the work of a Black composer. Now Blanchard’s earlier opera, “Champion,” from 2013, is coming to the house, beginning April 10.As in “Fire,” themes of identity, sexuality and the negotiation of traumatic memories dominate. “Champion” tells the true story of the closeted gay boxer Emile Griffith, who knocked out his opponent, Benny Paret, during a 1962 title bout; Paret never recovered consciousness and died 10 days later. At the Met, two bass-baritones share the role of Griffith: Ryan Speedo Green plays him as a young athlete in his prime, and Eric Owens, as an aging man looking back on his complicated past.A scene from Terence Blanchard’s “Champion,” in James Robinson’s production at Opera Theater of Saint Louis.Ken Howard/Opera Theatre of Saint LouisIn the wake of the box-office success of “Fire,” the Met — which has been struggling with ticket sales and said in December that it would withdraw $30 million from its endowment to cover costs — rushed “Champion” into production, part of a coming burst of contemporary operas aimed at broadening the audience. The staging reunites members of the team that helped make “Fire” vivid: the director James Robinson, the choreographer Camille A. Brown — the step dance routine that she conceived for “Fire” stopped the show — and the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Three veterans, Latonia Moore, Stephanie Blythe and Paul Groves, round out the cast.It is unusual for the Met (or any company) to unveil two new productions of Mozart operas back to back. And even rarer for both to be led by one conductor: in this case, Nathalie Stutzmann, a former mezzo-soprano turned maestro making her Met debut on the podium for “Don Giovanni” and “Die Zauberflöte.”Replacing a dreary, unilluminating Michael Grandage production on May 5, the new “Giovanni” is an import from the Paris Opera, where the much-discussed Dutch director Ivo van Hove and his colleagues put onstage what Joshua Barone described in The New York Times as “a de Chirico-like set populated by handsomely dressed people in a state of sexy desperation.” (It can hardly help but be an improvement on the Grandage.)Stutzmann, who started at the Atlanta Symphony this season — the only female music director leading one of the 25 largest American orchestras — conducts a promising cast, including Peter Mattei, a star in the title role at the Met for the past 20 years, as well as Adam Plachetka, Federica Lombardi, Ana María Martínez, Ying Fang and Ben Bliss.The situation with “Die Zauberflöte,” opening on May 19, is slightly complicated. The Met is planning to retain its existing production — which the director Julie Taymor and the designer George Tsypin filled with plexiglass and fanciful puppets — in its abridged, English-language, family-friendly form as “The Magic Flute,” now a holiday-season tradition.Performed in full and in German, the new-to-the-company “Die Zauberflöte,” a much-traveled staging directed by Simon McBurney, has the orchestra spilling over onto risers placed onstage and contemporary-style costumes. Stutzmann’s cast here includes Erin Morley, Lawrence Brownlee, Thomas Oliemans, Kathryn Lewek and Stephen Milling.Dudamel’s appointment is perhaps the biggest news in music this season: a new beginning. But the other crucial conductor move in America this spring signals the end of an era.Riccardo Muti is bringing his 13 years leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to a close in June.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesAt 81, Riccardo Muti — a fixture on the country’s major podiums since the 1970s and the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra during the ’80s — is bringing to a close a 13-year tenure at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with performances of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis,” June 23-25.Despite being an experienced Beethoven interpreter and a specialist in huge choral works, Muti stayed away from the notoriously thorny “Missa Solemnis” for decades, until he led it — with radiant dignity and grandeur — at the Salzburg Festival in 2021.“I always felt too small,” he said in an interview last year on Chicago radio, “never I felt ready to perform this huge monument, because it’s so deep, so vast.” Muti and other great conductors are not known for this kind of humility or patience, so these performances will be the fruit of uncommonly many years of study and thought.Given that the Chicago Symphony has not yet appointed his replacement, Muti will remain a crucial presence next season, and possibly beyond. But this “Missa Solemnis” — with the chorus coached by a distinguished guest, Donald Palumbo, the chorus master at the Met — is nevertheless sure to be a love fest between a superb orchestra and a conductor it has revered. More

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      How ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ Brought Step to the Met

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      The opera’s choreographer and co-director, Camille A. Brown, talks about the legacy of the African diaspora and influence of “School Daze” in her dances.Camille A. Brown had a lot of catching up to do. She wasn’t part of the original creative team behind Terence Blanchard’s opera “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” when it was presented in 2019 in St. Louis. But at the Metropolitan Opera, where the production runs through Saturday — the first time a work by a Black composer has been presented there in its 138-year history — her touch is palpable.Clearly, she caught up. And she’s making history, too: Brown, who shares directorial duties with James Robinson, is the first Black artist to direct a Met production. She is also the opera’s choreographer, and as such has brought social dance — step, the percussive form popular at historically Black colleges and universities (H.B.C.U.) — to the Met stage.Opening Act III is a step number that stops the show in its tracks. On opening night, the dancers held their final pose, one foot crossed over the other as sweat poured down their faces. Frozen in a line facing the audience, they tried to control their breathing as the audience clapped and roared. And clapped and roared some more. It lasted for more than a minute, and it was spectacular.When was the last time a dance stopped an opera in its tracks? Brown, a Tony-nominated dance-maker who choreographed “Porgy and Bess” under Robinson’s direction at the Met, has never experienced anything like it.Brown at opening night last month.Krista Schlueter for The New York Times“I was just thrilled,” she said. “I was thrilled for the moment. I was thrilled for social dance. I was thrilled for the dancers onstage that had been working for six weeks to put this show together.”She added: “I feel like the audience — to me — was clapping for several reasons. It was about the dance, but it was about what it meant to see that on the stage. And legacy.”Step and its use of the body as a percussive instrument speaks to the Black experience: When their drums were taken away, enslaved people created rhythm with their bodies. In the opera, step enters the picture when the protagonist, Charles (Will Liverman), is a college student and pledges at the fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi. He also continues to grapple with the experience of having been molested by his older cousin when he was a young boy, seen in flashbacks. (The opera is based on the 2014 memoir by The New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow.)While Act I contains no actual dance, the characters roam the stage with vibrant texture — their everyday, pedestrian movement, both rich and real, is recognizably Brown. Along with the step number, Brown choreographed another major dance, which opens Act II and shows Charles surrounded by dancers slipping in and out of erotic moments. Full of tension and longing, it reveals the character’s state of mind: confused and anguished, yet also intrigued.The baritone Will Liverman surrounded opens surrounded by dancers slipping in and out of erotic moments. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBrown is adept at baring emotion through the body. The dancers, their arms reaching imploringly, move vividly and broadly as if washing the stage with brushstrokes. Later, they transform into trees as Charles sings: “We draw our strength from underneath. We bend, we don’t break. We sway!”As he sings, Charles rounds his body forward in a powerful contraction and opens his arms as he stands straight and ultimately rises above his suffering.In “Fire,” which will be broadcast theatrically on Oct. 23 as part of the Met Live in HD series, Brown displays her choreographic range. “There was the more contemporary dance side, and then there’s the more rhythmical side,” she said. “You don’t get to feel those extremes in one place very often.”And her directorial prowess is only growing. Up next? She directs the Broadway revivalof Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” Recently Brown spoke about her work on “Fire” and honoring her ancestors. What follows are edited excerpts from that conversation.Brown with her co-director, James Robinson, during a rehearsal in August.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesHow did you, as a choreographer and director, envision the opera?When I’m working on a show, and as a director of my company, I always try to find, what is my entry point to the story? I thought about some of my dear friends that had very similar stories, so I entered it in that way.When I first heard about the opera and I found out that there was a fraternity section, I was so excited. There’s an opportunity to do a step dance inside of an opera?Why is it so important to put social dance on the Met stage?We talk about Terence being the first Black composer on the Met stage. And so along with that comes the Black lens and along with that comes Black culture spoken through or danced through the Black lens. And knowing that, at one point in the Met’s history, Black people weren’t allowed to perform on that stage.So you go from that to now: We are doing something that is so rooted in African tradition on the Met stage. That is so powerful. You see the fraternity-sorority, you see the H.B.C.U., but you also see the Juba dance [the African-American percussive form that uses the feet and the hands]. And you see the African diaspora onstage.“We are doing something that is so rooted in African tradition on the Met stage,” Brown said of the fraternity scenes.Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesHow did you put the number together?I was inspired by two movies: “Drumline” and “School Daze.” I’ve always loved “School Daze,” and when this opportunity came about to create the fraternity scene, I thought this needs to be a moment. Yes, Charles is pledging, and he’s going through that experience, but it’s also important, especially being on the Met stage, to show as much as we can of what that whole entire experience is. I want to talk about the dream ballet. Is it OK if I call it that?[Laughs] Yeah, yeah, that’s totally fine.What were you thinking?In any show that I’ve done, there’s always one piece that is really, really hard for me. And that was what you call the dream ballet. The first two weeks of working on it, I was freaking out a little bit because I wasn’t liking what I was doing.What happened?I was talking to my co-director, James Robinson, about the movie “Moonlight” and about how Charles was wrestling with what we are calling phantoms in his dreams — and how they haunted him, but they also enticed him. And so I gave myself a break and eased back on criticizing myself and said, You know what? Just play. Give yourself the space to figure it out.How did “Moonlight” influence you?Just by the beautiful imagery. Just wanting to talk about relationships and the sensitivity, and how does it feel to touch someone for the first time? Feeling like it’s wrong, but wanting to trust that it’s OK.“We talk about Terence being the first Black composer on the Met stage. And so along with that comes the Black lens.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHow involved were you in the first act?It may be easy for someone to come in and go, Oh, well, she just did the choreography. But that really wasn’t the case. James and I were both thinking about the molestation scene and how the chorus interacts.Most of the chorus members were also in “Porgy,” so I’d already worked with them. We were talking about how they move because even though they’re technically not dancing, they still are moving. And it’s the 1970s. We looked at some videos and talked: What were the small ways that people walked to indicate the time period?Was Katherine Dunham in your mind throughout this experience?Oh! Why do you ask?Because of your use of social dance and the fact that she choreographed at the Met. And because so much of this opera, at its root, is about the body as a force. It’s urgent. It made me think of your lineage.I always carry her and Pearl Primus and Dianne McIntyre and Marlies Yearby in the space with me. This is a historical moment, but this is also about people who have paved the way for you. It is coming from a deep place — it is coming from the social dance. How can I contribute to that legacy of Black choreographers delving into the African diasporic space? It’s about contributing to the space. When we do what we know, and we show how honest we are with our decisions, that is honoring our ancestors. More

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      Jazz and Opera Come Together in ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’

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      Two critics discuss Terence Blanchard’s “Fire,” the Metropolitan Opera’s first work by a Black composer.“Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which opened the Metropolitan Opera’s season last week, was a milestone: the company’s first work by a Black composer. The music, by Terence Blanchard —  a jazz trumpeter also known for his scores for Spike Lee films — has earned praise from both classical and jazz critics.The New York Times’s chief classical critic Anthony Tommasini described “a compositional voice dominated by lushly chromatic and modal harmonic writing, spiked with jagged rhythms and tart dissonance.” The jazz writer Nate Chinen wrote for NPR that “the smooth deployment of extended jazz harmony, often in breathing, fleeting passages, marks the piece as modern — as does the work of a rhythm section nestled within the orchestra.”The Times sent two more critics to the second performance on Friday. Seth Colter Walls, based on the classical desk, and Giovanni Russonello, who specializes in jazz, have both covered figures who cross with ease between concert halls and jazz clubs. But “Fire,” based on a 2014 memoir by the Times columnist Charles M. Blow, was their first night at the opera together, the spur to an extended discussion.SETH COLTER WALLS As we walked into the Met, you described yourself as an opera neophyte. But as Duke Ellington said, good music is good music. And from our intermission chats, I know we agree that this was a richly enjoyable work. How do you place it within Blanchard’s career?GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO We knew going in that Blanchard’s body of work is one of the broadest and most imposing of any living jazz musician. But I was struck by how many aspects of his past output seemed to come together in “Fire.” He’s one of the rare jazz composers who can load up a piece with rich harmony and real rhythmic pleasure, without feeling the need to tie things up neatly or deliver a clean payoff. That style fed perfectly into the emotional ambivalence that gives this opera its power.WALLS I find that quality to be one of the weapons he offers Spike Lee, who in his films tends to delight in keeping alive ambiguous tension. Blanchard can suture small wings of hope to what otherwise seems a rock of despair, and keep you wondering whether the whole assemblage will rise or fall.Will Liverman, left, and Angel Blue star in “Fire” at the Met.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRUSSONELLO From the opening scene of “Fire,” his diverse palette was put in the service of narrative nuance. As Charles, the main character, speeds down the highway, holding a pistol and a fatal decision in his hands, a distant swing feel wafted up from the pit, propelled by the bassist Matt Brewer and the drummer Jeff Watts, who’s known in jazz circles as Tain. It had the same restless, pushing-forward feeling as many of Blanchard’s small-group jazz compositions. But a drape of violins also hung above, moving in unison with the baritone Will Liverman’s vocal lines — and calling to mind some of those sweeping film scores.WALLS True, though Liverman also sounded a bit swamped by some of that opening brass-and-percussion-heavy writing. But soon after, the subtlety of his singing impressed me. Flintier aspects of his tone dominated during the first act, but then fell away as the night wore on. Even by the time of the “golden buttons” melody in the first act, I think we both were moved by the warmth in his voice.RUSSONELLO And by the gravitas of his duet on that melody with the soprano Angel Blue, who plays three characters: the half-menacing Destiny; the all-too-sympathetic Loneliness; and Greta, with whom he falls in love.Which leads me to another successful element of “Fire” that reflects Blanchard’s roots in the Black musical tradition: the interplay between vocalists, in duets and ensembles. Some of the most rousing moments were not solos but shared performances: When Charles’s mother, Billie (Latonia Moore), sings about her frustrated dreams early in the opera, the chorus is behind her describing the tough conditions of their town, giving her struggles texture and weight. Charles’s brothers’s recurring taunt — “Charles baby, youngest of five” — becomes one of the opera’s most memorable refrains.From left, Blue, Walter Russell III, Latonia Moore and Liverman. One of the opera’s strengths is in the interplay between vocalists in duets and ensembles.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWALLS Following Billie to her job at the meat-preparation plant also turns into a fine group number. And, crucially, there are laugh lines in these and other scenes.RUSSONELLO Group dance performances stood out, too. Act II’s opening ballet sequence and the step-team number in Act III were probably the clearest examples of African diasporic tradition meeting opera convention; in both moments, something sparked.Blanchard has said that, like his first opera, “Champion” (2013), “Fire” is an “opera in jazz.” But like any postmodernist, his understanding of what constitutes jazz is quite open. It can mean wildly extended harmony, blues inflections, odd-metered cadences, unconventional instrumental pairings. With “Fire,” the blueprint was classic Italian opera, but the furniture was these other elements. And magnetic rhythm was a constant throughout.WALLS The cast clearly loved sliding bluesy figurations between passages delivered with operatic vibrato.At the start of Act III, when Charles pledges the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, the step routine drew the night’s longest and most vigorous applause.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRUSSONELLO Blanchard has such a knack for counterintuition: A consequential scene at a blues club begins with the orchestra playing some straightforward blues in the background, but when the bandleader character (Spinner, Charles’s scalawag father, played by Chauncey Packer) gets onstage, he sings something more operatic and complex.WALLS I loved that head-fake from Blanchard. (I also wanted to attend a full set of Spinner’s at that club.)RUSSONELLO Spinner’s “Lord Love the Sinner” is a rapscallion anthem that harks back to Sportin’ Life’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So” in “Porgy and Bess.” Which brings up the question of how “Fire” relates to other works in the American canon that toe the line between blues, jazz and opera — including works by William Grant Still (a favorite composer of yours, Seth) or Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. (What powerful work might they have made with a Met commission?) Were there any major touchstones that jumped out as we took in “Fire”?WALLS Blanchard sounds like Blanchard, which is key. He’s coming out of a folk tradition, like Still. He’s adding ringers from his jazz career to the opera pit, like Anthony Davis and Leroy Jenkins have done. But he’s his own composer. Some piano-led moments made me think of what Jelly Roll Morton, known to riff on Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” would have done if given a chance to let his New Orleans aesthetic shine forth from the Met stage.Blanchard, holding up his finger, rehearses the jazz ensemble that is embedded in the “Fire” orchestra.Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesRUSSONELLO It bears noting that New Orleans — Blanchard’s hometown, too — has its own rich (though badly forgotten) history of Black opera. The first opera in the United States was staged there, and in the years between Reconstruction and Jim Crow a number of opera houses featured casts of color. Blanchard’s father, an amateur opera singer, was an inheritor of that tradition; this, in turn, became part of his son’s musical DNA.WALLS That second-act dream-ballet music — perfect for the languid, suggestive dancing that it was paired with — was but one passage suggesting Blanchard’s love for the standard repertory. Yet we haven’t had anything quite like “Fire.” Leonard Bernstein looked at intergenerational trauma amid a distinctly American sound world in “A Quiet Place” — and while I love it, it’s also a notorious problem piece. And “Porgy and Bess” has never really worked as an evening of theater for me. (Great tunes, though.)So my response to this big-budget production was: Finally! Real classical music resources are being used here, for a real exploration of American musical culture. I feel like there’s a huge potential audience for this material — even for people who may not think of themselves as operagoers. (“Fire” will be simulcast to movie theaters on Oct. 23 as part of the Met’s Live in HD program.)RUSSONELLO At the start of Act III, when Charles pledges the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, the step routine drew the night’s longest and most vigorous applause. It tapped into a dance tradition that’s basically unrelated to opera, but was accorded a different kind of power appearing at the Met.WALLS One of the virtues of Kasi Lemmons’s libretto — and what Blanchard does with it — is that we get these sequences that are at are both encomiums to bulwarks of Black life and critiques. Charles’s extended family, his church and his fraternity each play a part in keeping him from telling the truth about being molested by his cousin. The drama and the music keep braiding together pride and frustration, in a way that makes the opera’s conclusion and Charles’s self-acceptance feel truly momentous. More

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      The Met Opera Races to Reopen After Months of Pandemic Silence

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      The company, which faced steep losses after the pandemic forced it to shut down on March 12, 2020, is working to lure operagoers back to its 3,800-seat theater. Tera Willis was backstage at the Metropolitan Opera, painstakingly adding strand after strand of salt-and-pepper hair to a half-finished wig — one of dozens she and her team were racing to finish in time for opening night later this month after the pandemic had kept performers from getting measured until mid-August.“I would love about six months,” Ms. Willis, the head of the company’s wig and makeup department, said. “We have six weeks.”The chorus was back at work, singing through masks.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesA performer warmed up at a rehearsal for Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which will open the season.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesIn the Met’s underground rehearsal rooms, chorus members were straining to project through the masks they must rehearse in, a few pulling the fabric a couple of inches from their face for a moment or two. Just outside its gilded auditorium, which has been empty since the pandemic forced the opera house to close a year and half ago, stagehands were reupholstering some worn red velvet seats. Beneath the arched entry to the opera house, an electrician was installing wiring to make some of the heavy front doors touchless.Reopening after the long shutdown was never going to be easy for the Metropolitan Opera, the largest performing arts company in the nation. Unlike a Broadway theater, which must safely bring back one show, the Met, a $300-million-a-year operation, is planning to mount 196 performances of 22 different operas this season, typically changing what’s on its mammoth stage each night.The financial stakes are high: The Met, which lost $150 million in earned revenues during the pandemic, must now draw audiences back to its 3,800-seat opera house amid renewed concerns about the spread of the Delta variant. Will people return in force, after getting out of the habit of spending nights at the opera? Will the Met’s strict vaccine mandate — it will ban audience members under 12, who cannot yet be vaccinated — reassure operagoers, especially older ones? How much will travel bans hurt the box office, where international visitors made up as much as 20 percent of ticket buyers?The Met is warily watching sales. It has sold about $20 million worth of tickets for the season so far, the company said, down from $27 million at the same point in the season before the pandemic. Subscriptions, which have been steadily eroding at American symphony orchestras and opera companies in recent years, are down by about a quarter from before the pandemic, but officials expect more subscribers to renew when they feel safe about attending. Strong recent sales, and the speed with which the Met sold out an affordably priced performance of Verdi’s Requiem on Saturday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, offered hope that audiences will come back.The financial uncertainty led the Met to seek concessions from its unions, some of which will be restored if and when the box office approaches prepandemic levels. The ensuing labor disputes further complicated the reopening: The company did not reach a deal with its stagehands until July, delaying summer technical rehearsals, and only settled another, with its orchestra, late last month, removing the last major barrier to reopening.Riyo Mitsui, one of the Met’s wigmakers, at work.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSo now the company is gearing up quickly, preparing to marshal the forces of roughly 1,000 singers, orchestra players, conductors, dancers and actors scheduled to perform this season. It started with two free performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” outdoors at Lincoln Center last weekend; will perform Verdi’s Requiem on Saturday, its first performance back inside the opera house, a concert that will be broadcast on PBS; and it will finally open the opera season on Sept. 27 with Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” its first opera by a Black composer. The company is hoping that “Fire” and another contemporary opera — “Eurydice,” by Matthew Aucoin — will draw new audiences. The whole organization is getting ready to reopen. Keith Narkon, a ticket seller, was with his colleagues behind the Met’s box-office windows, stuffing tickets into envelopes — and happy to be back after the virus had taken away their jobs for more than a year.In the box office, employees are getting the tickets ready for opening night.Krista Schlueter for The New York Times“It was just this numbness,” Mr. Narkon, a self-described opera fanatic, said of the long shutdown. As the opera house buzzes with preseason anticipation, there are still bruised feelings from the labor battles, but there is also a palpable sense of relief to finally be back in the building together and working again after so many months of unemployment checks and uncertainty.“You don’t realize how much you respect the job until you don’t have it,” said Phillip D. Smith, a stagehand who has worked at the Met for over 20 years, as he ripped the worn velvet off a seat cushion.“You don’t realize how much you respect the job until you don’t have it,” Phillip D. Smith, a stagehand who has worked at the Met for over 20 years, said as he reupholstered a chair.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesThe doors to the auditorium got a fresh coat of paint.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBut life backstage is still far from normal, as company officials keep a close eye on the Delta variant, and the steps they must take to keep the company and the audience safe..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The company’s vaccination mandate is so strict that an unvaccinated telecom worker who arrived for a job was turned away. A special patron’s entrance area has been turned into a testing center where people in rehearsals must get nasal-swab tests twice a week. And to keep audience members apart from the performers, the first two rows of seats in the auditorium will be blocked off through the end of the year.“On one hand, it’s frightening and frustrating to see the rate of infection,” said Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met. “But it’s so thrilling to see the possibility within grasp of actually opening performances.”Workers cleaned one of the stairways at the opera house.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSome bitterness lingers over the labor disputes, which were resolved when the company’s three biggest unions agreed to new contracts that cut their pay modestly, saving the company money by moving some workers to a different health care plan and reducing the number of guaranteed full-time members of the orchestra and chorus.In the props department, where scenic artists were working to create corn on the cob and a pat of butter for a Thanksgiving dinner in the upcoming production of “Fire,” Ryan Hixenbaugh, an artist, lamented that some of the work had been finished in California, where Met management outsourced work after locking out its stagehands in December in the fight over pay cuts. “We had the capability of making all the scenery for all of these operas here,” Mr. Hixenbaugh said.With the opera house empty for more than a year, there was sprucing up to do: Keishla Nieves cleaned a brass railing.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesWith no audiences and no crowds for a year and a half, there was no need for stanchions to direct people to the Box Office. But they will soon be put in service again.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSome stagehands made ends meet during the shutdown, and the lockout, by building outdoor shelters for the city’s new al fresco dining spots. Others got work in television production, which rebounded before live performance.When they returned to the Met in July, the stagehands found an enormous amount of work. For more than a year, the opera house had sat still, as if frozen in time. The decades-old machinery that makes the Met’s stage run was not built for such dormancy.Two scenic backdrops that had been hanging for months had fallen to the ground earlier in the year. The wheels on the Met’s wagon system — which is powerful enough to quickly shuttle its mammoth sets of Ancient Egypt, Imperial China or Fin-de-Siècle Paris on and offstage — were flattened by the weight of the sets that had been left on top of them. And parts of the fly system, made up of wire rope lines and riggings, had rusted.“To leave it sitting still for that length of time was terrifying,” said David Feheley, the Met’s technical director. “So many of these systems have lasted as long as they have because of constant attention.”Stagehands built sets backstage. When they returned to the opera house, they found that the stage machinery needed a great deal of maintenance work.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesTo accommodate all the urgent maintenance work, the Met’s technical rehearsals were pushed from the beginning of August to the end of the month. One opera, Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride,” was canceled.The orchestra saw 11 of its 96 regular full-time members retire or leave their jobs during the pandemic, according to the orchestra committee, which negotiates labor issues on behalf of the musicians. A number of veteran stagehands retired too.The company hopes the excitement of working together again will outweigh any residual resentment.“The Met is maybe slightly fractured,” Mr. Gelb said, “but it is a family.”The Met is planning 196 performances of 22 different operas this season, which means a lot of ironing.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesPaul Tazewell, the costume designer for “Fire,” said that it was odd not to be able to see the faces of performers, who have been staying largely masked.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesAt this stage of the pandemic, it’s a family that can’t have any members under the age of 12, and not just in the audience. The Met’s performers cannot be young, either. In “Boris Godunov,” which is scheduled to open on Sept. 28, a part that is often sung by a boy soprano will be given to an adult mezzo-soprano. And in “Fire” — which is based on a memoir by Charles Blow, an Opinion columnist for The New York Times — a 13-year-old, Walter Russell III, will play the role of young Charles, who is supposed to be 7.“I have been trying to get into the mind of a 7-year-old kid,” Mr. Russell said.In the props department, scenic artists prepared a Thanksgiving dinner for the upcoming production of “Fire.”Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesTo reopen smoothly, the Met’s staff members still have numerous battles to wage.Everything from fabrics for costumes to machinery for stage lights to basic materials like plywood and steel are proving difficult to obtain because of pandemic supply-chain problems. And booking the international performers opera relies on has become a mess of unpredictable red tape, between visa troubles and virus-related travel restrictions.One of the few times performers can take their masks off these days is when they are being fitted in the costume shop, for photos that are taken to help designers take in the effect of each costume.“If there’s an unspoken feeling, normally I would be able to see that on a performer’s face, but I can’t access that,” said Paul Tazewell, the Tony-winning costume designer for “Fire.”A model of the “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” set.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBut, come Sept. 27 — if all goes as planned — the masks will come off, the Sputnik chandeliers will ascend, the curtain will go up and live opera will be back onstage.Zachary Woolfe contributed reporting. More