Review: ‘Fire’ Brings a Black Composer to the Met, Finally

Terence Blanchard’s fresh, affecting “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” reopened the opera house on Monday after an 18-month closure.

On Monday, for the first time in its 138-year history and as it returned from an 18-month closure, the Metropolitan Opera presented a work by a Black composer: Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” By opening the season with this work, the Met filled a gaping hole in its repertory at a time when the performing arts are rightfully being challenged to become more diverse.

Enthusiastic ovations at the end greeted Blanchard, a jazz trumpeter best known for his scores for Spike Lee films, and Kasi Lemmons, the writer, director and actress who with “Fire” becomes the first Black librettist of a work performed by the Met in its history. It was exhilarating to see them cheered on by an almost entirely Black cast, chorus and dance troupe, as well as by an audience with notably more people of color than usual at a Met opening.

“Fire,” which premiered at Opera Theater of St. Louis in 2019, is based on a 2014 memoir by the New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow; it’s an account of his turbulent upbringing in rural Louisiana as he endures emotional confusion, longs for affection from his tough-love mother and tries to come to terms with the wounds of sexual molestation. Blow’s book recalls his earlier life from an adult perspective, while also conveying his experiences as if they’re being lived in the moment. Blanchard and Lemmons use an operatic trick to present this layering.