Marta Eguilior A woman at the lectern
This afternoon, Terence Blanchard will go down in history as the first black composer to premiere an opera at the Met in New York
since it opened in 1883
. It is said soon. Or too late, depending on how you look at it. "I really don't really know how to feel," confesses the New Orleans trumpeter-songwriter. "It is an honor to be able to inaugurate the season of the great operatic temple of my country, but I cannot help but think of all those African-American composers whose operas did not suffer the same fate as mine." It refers to Scott Joplin,
Harry Lawrence Freeman, James P. Johnson, the great Shirley Graham Du Bois or his highly admired William Grant Still
, to name just a few.
"It is incomprehensible that over 138 years more than 300 titles have been performed here and none by an African-American composer."
Blanchard's good relationship with Peter Gelb, superintendent of the Met, has made it possible for
Fire shut up in my bones
this afternoon to raise the first curtain of the season after its successful premiere three years ago at the St. Louis Opera.
"We met when Gelb was president of Sony Classical, where I recorded three albums, but
I never imagined that I would end up composing an opera
."
Until now Blanchard was known, above all, for his participation in the soundtracks of Spike Lee, with whom he has just collaborated on the documentary
New York, the epicenter of 9/11 and a pandemic.
.
“The great thing about working with Spike is that it opens your eyes to the hidden reality of things.
The bad thing, that people are always asking you about the controversies that persecute them.
I always answer the same thing:
Spike is a sensitive, decent and extraordinarily talented guy
.
Blanchard began playing the piano at the age of five and was accepted as a student of Ellis Marsalis in the burgeoning New Orleans jazz scene.
Before starting to rack up Grammy Awards on his shelf (he has six),
Miles Davis referred to him during an interview as "the most brilliant trumpeter of his generation"
, which just catapulted his fame and opened the doors of the studios from Columbia and Blue Note, where he recorded freely with Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall, Cassandra Wilson ...
«When Miles said that I was playing in Perugia. As I left the hotel, I found myself surrounded by journalists. He didn't know what had happened, but Miles happened to be in Italy too. A few days later, he received me in his dressing room at the Umbra Festival and
we talked for a while
. It was one of the most incredible moments of my career.
It goes without saying that, at that time, opera was not among his priorities. «My relationship with gender goes back to some memories of my childhood.
My father was an amateur baritone
, so opera was always playing at home:
Carmen, Rigoletto, La bohème
... ». In 2009 Blanchard attended the San Luis Opera for the first time as an audience, where four years later his first foray into the genre,
Champions
, about the life of a boxer, was released.
"I discovered
a world full of possibilities
that completely broke my schemes," says Blanchard. "To my African-American friends who refuse to attend the opera because of everything it represents I tell them that they are wrong, because it is the highest expression of theater musical, an incredible way to reach people's hearts.
Based on the memoirs of
New York Times
journalist
Charles M. Blow,
Fire shut up in my bones
tells the story of a young African-American who sets out on a journey of self-improvement with a backpack laden with trauma. When Blanchard saw George Floyd dying under the knee of a policeman on television, the opera was already finished, but those images gave a new meaning to the score, halfway
between the standards of Wayne Shorter and the great melodic motifs of Puccini
.
"It was the same old song, but listened to in a different way," says the 59-year-old composer.
«Then I realized that our ears had become accustomed to the rhythm and melody, but that we had stopped hearing the words of some songs.
In this sense, the protests of the Black Lives Matter have given a new layer of meaning
to the opera that will surely not go unnoticed by the public attending the premiere this afternoon.
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