OPERA

Terence Blanchard: Champion

TUESDAY & SATURDAY, APRIL 18 & 22, 2023 (continuing through MAY 13)
7:30 PM TUESDAY
8:00 PM SATURDAY

Metropolitan Opera
30 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$49.50-$497.50
TICKETS + INFORMATION

I was pretty skeptical about Fire Shut Up in My Bones. A mainstream jazz musician composing an opera? How could that not end up being Broadway/Vegas shit? Well, Terence Blanchard shut me up: it was one of the great recent American operas, betraying a pronounced harmonic sophistication on top of the pizazz you’d expect and that rare gift for musical dramatization that many composers (even really great ones) just don’t have. Fire was such sensation that it’s no surprise the Met rushed to put on (a newly revised version of) Blanchard’s preceding initial opera, about the bisexual boxer Emile Griffith (who killed his boxing arch-rival in a match after a homophobic slur, and was himself viciously beaten on a New York street after leaving a gay bar). Let’s posit that Fire was probably a step forward. You can’t get that far unless you’re coming from somewhere pretty great to begin with. Sort of a must.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: Both P.J. Clarke’s and the remorselessly mediocre Cafe Fiorello swear they’ll be open after this opera ends. Good luck finding anywhere near the Met open after this show. Before, maybe the dependable neighborhood French at La Boite en Bois.