![]() "Absence" by Terence Blanchard, featuring the E Collective and the Turtle Island Quartet (Blue Note)."Fire Shut Up in My Bones," at the Lyric Opera of Chicago (March 24,2022-April 8, 2022)."Fire Shut Up in My Bones" (an opera by Terence Blanchard, libretto by Kasi Lemmons), at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City (archive page).I just wanna get a nap in-between if I could!'" The night of the gala, man, you know, 'On behalf of the Met, we'd like to commission Terence to write another opera for us.' I was like, 'Whoa, okay. "Now that you've caught the opera bug, are you working on another one?" "It's not like we're trying to be profane for the sake of being profane. I'm like, 'Wait, did they just sing a profanity?'" And there were times when my ears would catch up to what was going on. Hsu said, "I hadn't been to the opera since, you know, a third-grade field trip. For Terence Blanchard, it was an opportunity to take risks. In reviews, the production has been praised as being unlike any other opera. ![]() I'm trying to find the sound for my generation." Listen, I'm a jazz musician who loves Bird, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk. It's time for us to move on, you know? Nobody loves the classics more than me. "And that should be a big lesson to arts organizations around the country," Blanchard said. Performances of "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" quickly sold out. "You think there's racial component to this? Listen, man, there's misogyny all over this, too, with all of these women that were rejected, right?"īut this time, it was the Met that reached out to Blanchard: "Called me up and said, 'We wanna put your opera on at the Met.' I'm like, did this really just happen? All of a sudden, boom, and it blows up and takes off like a runaway freight train." Do you think there's some racial component to this rejection?" They saw this as the pinnacle, and the commentaries are so dismissive. Francis Thurber, Gertrude Auld Thomas, William Grant Still, women, African Americans, people wanted to perform here. "These are all people whose works didn't make it at that stage – Mrs. This is the place that makes the statement for the rest of the world." "Everything was measured by what happened here at the Met. Hsu asked, "In the '20s and '30s, what kind of opportunities existed for William Grant Still?" Still, known as the "dean of African American composers," submitted three operas to the Met over a 20-year span. ![]() In its 138 years, America's leading opera house and largest performing arts institution had never staged an opera by a Black composer.īlanchard said, "The arts are supposed to be things that bring us together, that throw away all of those notions of bigotry and intolerance, right? So, it breaks my heart to think that William Grant Still approached the Met, and was turned away." ![]() Hsu said, "It's funny that they take themselves so seriously that he writes out 'Metropolitan' each time. "Amateurish." "Uninteresting." "Not suitable for the Metropolitan." That film, I knew, had to be powerful." Composer Terence Blanchard.Ī ledger book from the early 1900s contains the Met's internal notations about opera submissions. "When we did 'Malcolm X,' it was the first time that I felt like I was connected emotionally to something that I was writing for film. Hsu asked, "When did you feel like you were a composer?"
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