When New York’s Metropolitan Opera reopened after an 18-month shutdown, it decided to make a grand and historic gesture. The season premiered with the production ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones,’ the first performance by a black composer in the company’s 138 years. Watch.
Composer Terence Blanchard talks to Anderson about his historic opera debut – CNN
Anderson talks to Oscar-nominated composer Terence Blanchard, whose new opera broke a 138-year-old precedent. Watch.
‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ Review: The Met Comes Blazing Back – Wall Street Journal
Monday night’s performance, the first in 18 months, featured the Met’s first-ever opera by a Black composer: a stage adaptation of the memoir by Charles M. Blow. Read More.
Met returns with 1st work by a Black composer in its history – AP News
“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. Read More.
Metropolitan Opera 2021-22 Review: Fire Shut Up in My Bones – Opera Wire
Terence Blanchard & Kasi Lemmons’ Masterpiece Makes History in So Many Ways. Read More.
The Met Comes Alight Again With Fire Shut Up in My Bones – Vulture
A young Black man rages by the side of the road, aims a pistol, and bellows a gangster line: “Prepare to die, motherfucker.” Fire Shut Up in My Bones, which relaunched the Metropolitan Opera on Monday, opens in a blaze of fury, the orchestra seething with such force that it threatens to overpower the story before it even begins. Read More.
Terence Blanchard’s Met Opera Debut Is A Singular Achievement And A Shared Success – NPR
Again and again in Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the magnetically powerful new opera by Terence Blanchard, the focus returns to the torturous weight of a burden carried alone. Read More.
Premiere of ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ Sets the Reopened Met Ablaze – Observer
Fire Shut Up in My Bones is in the running for best American opera of the 21st century. Read More.
With debut of ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ at the Met, a watershed moment for American opera – Washington Post
There’s a line in the middle of Act I of composer Terence Blanchard and librettist Kasi Lemmon’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” that sat in my head like a caption throughout the show’s premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night. Read More.
Our Stories Are Universal Too.’ Terence Blanchard on Bringing Black Narratives to the Metropolitan Opera – Time
When the Metropolitan Opera reopens Monday after an 18-month closure caused by the pandemic, it will do so with Fire Shut Up In My Bones, the first opera in the Met’s 138-year history written by a Black composer. Read More.