Jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard's unexpected path into the opera house

Jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard's unexpected path into the opera house In September of 2021 at the Metropolitan Opera's gala opening night, the curtain rose not on Puccini or Verdi, but on an opera by the American jazz trumpeter and film score composer Terence Blanchard. It was the first time in the Met's 138-year history that America's leading opera house presented an opera by a Black composer. It wasn't until 1949, when William Grant Still's Troubled Island came to New York City Opera, that an opera by a Black composer was performed on a major American stage. As Terence's music invites new audiences into the velvet splendor of the opera house, it is redefining this art form, and welcoming the next generation of composers and singers into a future full of possibilities.