The Metropolitan Opera opened its 2020-21 New York season on September 27 with Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on Charles M. Blow’s memoir, marking the company’s first offering by a black composer. The production has received positive reviews from critics. The creative team includes Terence Blanchard (score), Kasi Lemmons (libretto), James Robinson (direction), Camille A. Brown (direction, choreography), Allen Moyer (sets), Paul Tazewell (costumes), Christopher Akerlind (lights), Greg Emetaz (projections), and Yannick Nézet-Séguin (music direction). The cast features Will Liverman (Charles), Walter Russell III (Char’es-Baby), Angel Blue (Destiny/Loneliness/Greta), Latonia Moore (Billie), Chauncey Packer (Spinner), Ryan Speedo Green (Uncle Paul), and Chris Kenney (Chester). The production runs through October 23.
New York Times (Anthony Tommasini): Blanchard deftly blends elements of jazz, blues, hints of big band and gospel into a compositional voice dominated by lushly chromatic and modal harmonic writing. … I wish Nézet-Séguin had encouraged more subtlety and restraint. Yet Fire remains a fresh, affecting work. … Blanchard was fortunate to have Lemmons as a collaborator. Her libretto is poetic, poignant, sometimes grimly funny, always dramatically effective.
NPR (Nate Chinen): Blanchard’s music for Fire is glowingly consonant but full of subtle harmonic and timbral surprises. … Working with Lemmons’ evocative libretto, which manages a shifting balance of plainspoken and poetical, Blanchard finds select passages in the text to add a vernacular flourish. … As the company emerged for a raucous round of encores, … it was impossible not to think about what was ending in that moment, and what might be beginning.
Observer (James Jorden): Lemmons structures the opera as a memory play. … This technique gives Blanchard the freedom of depicting scenes in real time or filtering the event though narrative arias colored by Charles’s emotions. … Fire Shut Up in My Bones is in the running for best American opera of the 21st century. Trimmed of perhaps 20 minutes of restatement and filigree, I think it would be a clear winner. At whatever length, this opera offers abundant vocal and dramatic opportunities to the cast.
OperaWire (David Salazar): Fire Shut Up in My Bones, in my mind, is a triumph not only because of what it represents in a larger social context or how it can open opportunities for future creators of color but because it is itself, a masterpiece. … I cannot emphasize how unforgettable an experience this was. … One hopes that the Met does its job and gives it a permanent seat at the table, because Blanchard and Lemmons’ masterpiece deserves that and so much more.
Parterre (Gabrielle Ferrari): What Lemmons, Blanchard, and Liverman have achieved in the character of Charles is extraordinary. … Blanchard’s score is richly colored and beautifully orchestrated, imbued with moments of humor, but mainly with a clear-eyed compassion for his characters, to whom he never condescends nor condemns. … The blend of classical and jazz styles is seamless; Blanchard’s familiarity with a range of idioms and his ability to tie them together into a was a triumph.
Washington Post (Michael Andort Brodeur): In many ways, Fire honors the contours and conventions of traditional opera, but its finest moments spring from its divergences. … Blanchard and his team have created something that has never been seen or heard on the Met stage. … It’s a defiant, tender and vital work of art, and a watershed moment for American opera. … It feels like a starting point for something new, a refresh of where opera can take us.