Terence Blanchard, first Black person to compose an opera at the Met, is bringing the concert version of his work to Philly

Jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard was so moved by New York Times journalist Charles M. Blow’s memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones, he composed an opera inspired by it.

The Opera Theatre of St. Louis debuted the Fire Shut up in My Bones opera in 2019 — an elaborate three-act production recounting Blow’s sexual abuse at the hands of an older cousin, and his subsequent healing. The story is set in a rural Louisiana town in the 1980s, when shame prevented folks of speaking of such things.

New York’s Metropolitan Opera opened its 2021-22 season with Fire and Blanchard, known for scoring the swanky jazz tracks that swirl through Spike Lee Joints, became the first Black person to compose an opera staged at the Met.

This Sunday, Blanchard and the E-Collective will lead a 90-minute jazz concert in Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Verizon Hall featuring tunes from Fire. The Turtle Island Quartet, a San Francisco-based ensemble, will bring the strings, and soprano Adrienne Danrich (Porgy and Bess, Philadelphia Orchestra) and baritone Justin Austin — who played Charles in Fire’s Chicago run — will sing its arias. The streamlined version of the opera will be in Philly for one night, part of a multicity tour designed to “experience the content live and give people who wouldn’t have access to the full opera a taste of the show,” Blanchard said.

Performances like this one expand Fire beyond opera into the pop-culture zeitgeist, adding diversity to the canon of American classical music a lot of which stems from opera. Just as Hamilton’s mixed tape and Frozen’s “Let Go” made musical scores more visible, Blanchard’s Fire jazz suite may lead to more arias on Spotify playlists.

“Opera can feel so distant to many of us,” said Sarah Williams, Opera Philadelphia’s director of new works and creative producer. “Blanchard is multidisciplinary; he doesn’t stay in one artistic lane, so his work draws us closer and helps further the form, potentially altering the culture of opera forever.”

Fire opens with Blow racing to his mother’s home to kill Chester, the cousin who molested him when he was 7. “My lost innocence had to be avenged,” Blow writes in the 227-page memoir. “My conflict had to be quelled. This is why he had to die. This is why I had to kill him.”

Blow’s violent yet churchgoing family picked at him because of his soft, “peculiar grace.” Still, he earned a full scholarship to Grambling State University, where he built his confidence as a writer and pledged Kappa Alpha Psi. Today, he is an award-winning journalist and an MSNBC correspondent, whose work includes the 2023 HBO documentary, South to Black Power, chronicling how reverse Black migration in the late 1990s has impacted the South’s political landscape.

“I knew instinctively, given everything this man went through, his story would make a compelling opera,” Blanchard, 62, said. “I could relate. I too was ostracized, but it was for being a smart kid who wore glasses and carried a trumpet to the bus stop. I know what it feels like to be set aside in your own community.”

In the early 20th century, Black opera singers like South Philly contralto Marian Anderson (Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall will be renamed in her honor in June) performed for segregated audiences. The genre rarely veered from classics like Madame Butterfly and La bohème that pleased rich, donation-making audiences but didn’t center the Black experience.

“[Charles’] story is relatable to so many people because it’s about survivors,” Blanchard said. “After the show this one guy walked up to me in tears. Art is supposed to make us reflect. It’s supposed to make us question, and most of all it’s supposed to make us grow.”

George Floyd’s murder in 2020 pushed the Met’s general manager Peter Gelb to bring performances centering Black people to the opera house’s stage. Blanchard became the first Black person in the Met’s 138-year-history to compose one of its productions. Kasi Lemmons, (Eve’s Bayou, Harriet) wrote Fire’s text, becoming the Met’s first Black librettist.

Fifteen years before the Met, Opera Philadelphia co-commissioned Margaret Garner, based on Toni Morrison’s Beloved, with Michigan Opera Theatre and Cincinnati Opera. In 2005, it premiered in the Detroit Opera House, making Morrison Opera Philadelphia’s first Black librettist.

Last spring, Blanchard’s two-act opera, Champion, based on the life of middleweight boxer Emile Griffith, premiered at the Met. Music from Champion and Fire — each conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin — earned Grammys for best opera recording.

The elite arts community spent centuries gatekeeping opera and it’s taken centuries for Black people to legally set foot in America’s iconic opera houses as guests, let alone compose one. How does Blanchard feel breaking the lock on the gate?

“Who wouldn’t be proud?” asked Blanchard, whose father was a baritone opera singer. “But I always tell people it has to come with an asterisk next to it. We equate first Black with being the first qualified and that’s just not true. There were great composers who came before me and were rejected,” he said, referencing early 20th century composer William Grant Still. Then he added: “But the bottom line is [the Met isn’t] doing an opera of mine for the third year in the row for fun. They are making money.”

Blanchard says the Met’s more diverse audiences is proof that there is a demographic the opera world has overlooked for generations. He wants more elite opera houses to take note. “I can’t be a token,” Blanchard said. “I need to be a turnkey. There has to be other composers who are being allowed to do productions at opera houses and tell current stories.”

Courtney Bryan and Tyshawn Sorey, Opera Philadelphia’s two resident composers, are Black. Last month Opera Philadelphia and the Apollo Theater announced a partnership to develop more operatic works. “It’s more than just who is on stage,” Williams said. “You have to have a shift in the writing.”

Blanchard’s success in New York is moving the needle at opera houses in Philadelphia and around the country. “I’m following in the footsteps of my predecessors,” Blanchard said. “Just trying to live up to their greatness. Make them proud.”

Terence Blanchard will appear with the E-Collective and Turtle Island Quartet in “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” April 7, at 5 p.m. at Verizon Hall, Broad and Spruce Streets. Tickets range from $45 to $85 and are available here.