Jazz Trumpeter’s opera to feature at the Met
Jazz trumpeter and composer, Terence Blanchard will become the first black composer ever to have had an opera staged at the Metropolitan Opera , New York. It was announced earlier this week that the company would present ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’, by the composer and jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard, in a coming season.
Peter Gelb the Met’s general manger stated, “He’s a brilliant composer,” adding that he had been in talks for months with the Opera Theater of St. Louis, which gave the premiere of ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ in June, about bringing its production to New York.
‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ is based on a memoir by Charles Blow, an Opinion columnist for The New York Times, with a libretto by the writer and director Kasi Lemmons. In his review in The Times, Anthony Tommasini praised it as “subtly powerful.”
Many details are still to be worked out, including whether the Met will present the work at its 3,800-seat opera house at Lincoln Center, or as part of its new initiative to collaborate with other presenters, such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Public Theater. But Mr. Gelb said that it could come to New York as soon as the 2021-22 season, with support from the Ford Foundation, and that the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, would conduct it.
Photo Credit Pierre Michel Jean/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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