Lyric Opera 2021-2022 Issue 7 Fire Shut Up My Bones

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 34 stand, two feet planted on the ground, and say, ‘This is who I am.’ A way of living with that truth and not being afraid to display it.” In working out how best to portray Charles’s complicated inner life in her libretto, Lemmons took inspiration from a conversation with Robinson, who she says opened her mind to the freedom and possibilities available in opera. “One of the things he said that really sank in was that, in opera, anything can sing,” she remembers. “I really embraced that. So first I thought that the trees could sing, and then I took that a step further and thought, well, maybe his loneliness can sing.” In the end, one of the two principal female roles (sung by soprano Jacqueline Echols) encompasses three characters: Greta, a love interest of Charles’s, and the forces of Destiny and Loneliness. The other primary female role is Charles’s mother, Billie, portrayed by soprano Latonia Moore. Another important part of Charles’s journey takes place during his time at Grambling State, a historically Black university, where he joins a Black fraternity known for its step shows. Given the college scenes in Act III, co-director and choreographer Brown knew that she wanted to include a step dance—bringing that tradition into a context where, even during the lifetimes of some members in todays’ audiences, Black people were not even allowed on the stage. “I thought it was especially important,” she says. “We are talking about a step that comes from the rich history of the African diaspora.” When Blanchard was growing up in New Orleans, his father—a singer who loved classical music— wanted his son to be involved with opera. “He was an amateur baritone, and he really wanted to be an opera singer,” Blanchard says. “When he was a younger kid in the 1930s and 1940s, you know, he wasn’t given opportunities to do that.” When James Robinson asked Blanchard to write his first opera, Blanchard was moved to tears. “Right then, I could see my dad up in heaven going, ‘I told you. I told you!’” he says. “I kept thinking about how this is really the life he wanted.” Fire Shut Up in My Bones is an opera that encompasses multitudes. Blanchard’s style of bringing jazz, gospel, and blues together creates a dynamic but lyrical operatic world that both propels the drama and allows it to bloom. The story has painful and tender moments, spanning the last third of the 20th century and into the present day, a period during which the United States has witnessed rapid yet uneven changes in attitudes about manhood, sexuality, and their intersections with race. Brown sums up the nature and importance of the story by describing it as “a Black experience. And people need to see as many Black experiences as possible.” Yet power and violence around sexual encounters are, tragically, everyone’s experiences in some way, whether through bullying, harassment, and assault directly, or as a bystander, friend, or loved one Char’es-Baby and the company of dancers in the Metropolitan Opera’s production. Photo: Ken Howard