Met returns with 1st work by a Black composer in its history

NEW YORK — “We bend, we don’t break. We sway!” sings the chorus in the second act of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” That is how much of the audience of about 4,000 in the Metropolitan Opera felt as they watched Monday night’ landmark performance, the first staged work in the house since March 2020 and the first by a Black composer in the long history of a company that launched in 1883. This was Blanchard’s second opera after 2013′s “Champion,” about boxer Emile Griffith, and the music is most colorful and moving in orchestral parts. Night was my sworn enemy.” And picking up on the search for sexual identity, a theme from Blow’s book, Charles sings near the end “I am what I am,” harking back to “La Cage aux Folles,” the 1984 Tony Award winner by Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein. An all-Black cast included soprano Latonia Moore as Charles’ doting mother Billie, soprano Angel Blue in the endearing triple roles of Destiny, Loneliness and Greta and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green as the menacing Uncle Paul.