Terence Blanchard: 'Fire Shut Up In My Bones'

"Magnetically powerful" — NPR

"A fresh, affecting work … Poetic, poignant, sometimes grimly funny, always dramatically effective." — The New York Times

Following up the 2016 world premiere of a revised version of Terence Blanchard’s opera Champion: An Opera in Jazz, these historic performances featuring the GRAMMY-winning Turtle Island Quartet and operatic vocalists Will Liverman and Karen Slack will focus on music from Blanchard’s groundbreaking new opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on journalist and author Charles M. Blow’s powerful memoir chronicling his early life in rural Louisiana.

With a libretto written by NAACP Image Award-winning actress, director, and screenwriter Kasi Lemmons, Fire Shut Up in My Bones premiered at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2019 and opened the 2021-22 season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in September 2021. The NYC performances marked the first time an opera written by a Black composer or a Black librettist has been staged at the Met in the organization’s 136-year history. Operatic baritone Will Liverman who performed the central role of Blow at the Met and soprano Karen Slack from the premiere performances at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis reprise their roles for these evenings in Miner Auditorium.

Blow’s candid 2014 autobiography recounts his struggles to define his manhood, sexuality, and personal values in the rural South of the 1970s, and his attempts to break free from the repression imposed upon him by his family, his church, and his college life. The rage and violence that were kindled within him and his desire for revenge inspired the book and opera title, adapted from the Book of Jeremiah:

“His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.”

For these two nights, audiences will feel the visceral power of Blanchard’s visionary opera.