All you need to know about Opening night Met premiere “Fire Shut Up in My Bones”

Home All you need to know about Opening night Met premiere “Fire Shut Up in My Bones”

The 2021–22 Season

Opening night Met premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones

TERENCE BLANCHARD / LIBRETTO BY KASI LEMMONS

Fire Shut Up in My Bones

NEW PRODUCTION

THIS PRODUCTION RUNS:

SEP 27 – OCT 23

Overview

Opening Night of the 2021–22 season will be a historic occasion—the Met’s first performance of an opera by a Black composer. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Grammy Award–winning jazz musician and composer Terence Blanchard’s adaptation of Charles M. Blow’s moving memoir, which The New York Times praised after its 2019 world premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis as “bold and affecting” and “subtly powerful.” Featuring a libretto by filmmaker Kasi Lemmons, the opera tells a poignant and profound story about a young man’s journey to overcome a life of trauma and hardship. James Robinson and Camille A.

Brown—two of the creators of the Met’s sensational recent production of Porgy and Bess—co-direct this new staging; Brown, who is also the production’s choreographer, becomes the first Black director to create a mainstage Met production. Baritone Will Liverman, one of opera’s most exciting young artists, stars as Charles, alongside sopranos Angel Blue as Destiny/Loneliness/Greta and Latonia Moore as Billie.

An opera by Terence Blanchard

Based on the book by ‎Charles M. Blow

Libretto by Kasi Lemmons

A co-production of the Metropolitan Opera and LA Opera

Commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Originally commissioned by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, co-commissioned by Jazz Saint Louis.

Production a gift of The Ford Foundation.

CAST

Select a date from the dropdown to filter cast by date of performance

All Dates

Sep 27 Monday at 6:30PM

Oct 1 Friday at 7:30PM

Oct 4 Monday at 7:30PM

Oct 8 Friday at 7:00PM

Oct 13 Wednesday at 7:00PM

Oct 16 Saturday at 1:00PM

Oct 19 Tuesday at 7:00PM

Oct 23 Saturday at 1:00PM

CONDUCTOR

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

PERFORMING

SEP 27

OCT 1,4,13,16,19,23

TBA

CONDUCTOR

TBA

PERFORMING

OCT 8

DESTINY/LONELINESS/GRETA

Angel Blue

PERFORMING

ALL DATES

BILLIE

Latonia Moore

PERFORMING

ALL DATES

CHARLES

Will Liverman

PERFORMING

ALL DATES

Creators

CO-DIRECTORS

James Robinson & Camille A. Brown

SCENIC DESIGNER

Allen Moyer

COSTUME DESIGNER

Paul Tazewell

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Christopher Akerlind

PROJECTION DESIGNER

Greg Emetaz

CHOREOGRAPHER

Camille A. Brown

COMPOSER

Terence Blanchard

In tandem with the painful decision to cancel the entirety of the Met’s 2020–21 season, we are proud to announce ambitious artistic plans for the company’s return in the 2021–22 season. The newly announced season will open September 27, 2021, with the Met premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones (pictured above)—the first opera by an African American composer to be performed at the Met—with a libretto by Kasi Lemmons, based on the memoir by Charles M. Blow. The opera will be conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and will star Angel Blue, Latonia Moore, and Will Liverman.

Blanchard’s opera is one of three contemporary works to have premieres in 2021–22, the greatest number of new operas to premiere in a single Met season since 1928–29. The other new works are Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice, set to a libretto by Sarah Ruhl, also conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and starring Erin Morley in the title role, and Brett Dean’s Hamlet, with a libretto by Matthew Jocelyn and with Allan Clayton as the tortured Dane.

The season also features new productions of Verdi’s Rigoletto, starring Rosa Feola, Piotr Beczała, and Quinn Kelsey, and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, with Nadine Sierra in the title role, opposite Javier Camarena. The Met premiere of the original five-act, French-language version of Verdi’s Don Carlos will also have Nézet-Séguin on the podium leading an all-star cast: Sonya Yoncheva, Elīna Garanča, Matthew Polenzani, Etienne Dupuis, Günther Groissböck, and John Relyea.

Fire Shut Up in My Bones will be co-directed by James Robinson and Camille A. Brown, building on their collaboration with The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess in the 2019–20 season. Brown becomes the first Black director in Met history to create a mainstage production; she is also the production’s choreographer. Three other new productions come from returning directors, as well: Mary Zimmerman will direct the Met premiere of Eurydice, Bartlett Sher will direct the new Rigoletto, and Sir David McVicar is back for Don Carlos. Lucia di Lammermoor will see the highly anticipated Met debut of director Simon Stone, and Neil Armfield also debuts, bringing to the Met his acclaimed Glyndebourne Festival production of Dean’s Hamlet.