He has also scored many Spike Lee films including Malcolm X and 4 Little Girls. It was Blanchard’s second successful opera. In the New Yorker, Alex Ross wrote, “The transitions between inner and outer worlds are handled with unfailing deftness.”įortunately, Fire Shut Up in My Bones had a previous outing at its 2019 Opera Theatre of Saint Louis premiere. NPR jazz writer Nate Chinen wrote “the smooth deployment of extended jazz harmony, often in breathing, fleeting passages, marks the piece as modern - as does the work of a rhythm section nestled within the orchestra.” But in particularly serious moments, Blanchard leaves behind all stylistic anchors with music that serves the dramatic situation selflessly, such as when Charles’ mother realizes that her “boy of peculiar grace” will never fit in small town Louisiana.īoth classical and jazz critics have proclaimed the opera to be the real thing. Jazz and operatic narrative come together in Blanchard’s use of riffs that are repeated with subtly added and subtracted notes, moving the drama forward. The revolving Allen Moyer set shifts between past, present, and any number of locales. The central character, Charles, looks back as a Northern urbanite with a successful career on the sexual abuse that began at age 7, on his torturous road to his finding equilibrium as a bisexual Black man.

Metropolitan opera theaters