Met Season To Open With First-Ever Opera By Black Composer

"Fire," with a score by jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard, will be the first opera by a Black musician presented in the Met's 138 years.

Charles Blow recalls being in the audience at the premiere of the opera based on his memoir, "Fire Shut Up in My Bones," and watching the scene that depicts his sexual abuse as a child by an older cousin.

"To be honest," he said, "it was more uncomfortable watching everybody watching me. Because they were so unnerved by it they worried about my reaction."

They needn't have been concerned, Blow said in an interview. "When I wrote the book I'd already dealt with all that," he said. "I don't have the residual trauma that a lot of people expect me to have."