Yes, it was that kind of night…
Charles Blow, composer Terence Blanchard, and the cast of Fire Shut Up in My Bones at the show's opening night at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on Sep. 28, 2021. The opera is based on a memoir by Charles Blow and is the first-ever opera by a Black composer presented by the Metropolitan Opera, a 138-year-old institution.
Terence Blanchard broke paradigms Monday night at the Metropolitan Opera house. Fire Shut Up In My Bones shook the shingles off the rooftop and opened up a skylight: and the long list of ancestors of that very stage dropped in and hoovered ever so close over the spectacle of a symphony resplendent in all the grace and elegance that perfect solitude seeks.
It was not a night to go quietly and gently, as we, opera, devotees are known; it was a night of deep soulful mourning and fierce reclamation of humanity, and yes, it was loud. Stomping loud. Crying loud. Heart breaking loud. Loving loud. Fighting loud. Yes, being Black loud.
New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in the evening, photographed in 2015. Courtesy: Metropolitan Opera House
I heard Paul Robeson’s raucous bellow and Leontyne Price’s skirt hem rake gently across the stage as she moved closer. Bert Williams and George Walker sat on the tops of the backstage, watching the audience levitate. So many ancestors to witness a breaking of paradigms. Yes, it was that kind of night.
I love the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera--it is always mesmerizing but weighted, kaleidoscopic yet isolating, and celebratory and colonizing. Blanchard broke open the canon, and as I said to him that night in the fragrant air awash in bliss as we all lingered on the plaza giddy and silly, " Met House ain't gon’ be the same, brother". He retorted, "really, you think?". Yes, it was that kind of night.