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

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 35 BEING MOVED: Black Music in Chicago It is no surprise that Chicago, among the main destinations of the Great Migration (when African Americans in vast numbers moved north after Reconstruction), has long been an important vortex for Black music production. The city is well known for its own Blues iterations, early Jazz at the start of the 20th century, and the 1960s modern jazz style developed in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (the AACM is still active today). Also renowned is the celebrated birth of gospel at Thomas Dorsey’s Pilgrim Baptist Church on the South Side. In the traditional concert hall, Chicago has nurtured the talents of several significant Black women composers. In 1933 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered Florence Price’s Symphony 1 in E minor (the first major orchestra to perform a work by a Black woman composer). Margaret Bonds (Price’s student and colleague), Betty Jackson King, and Regina Harris Baiocchi (still working) are among the best known, and bring this legacy up to the present. In 2004 Chicago was the only city in the US to host Opera Africa with the performance of Princess Magogo kaDinizulu by South Africa’s leading classical composer, Mzilikazi Khumalo (presented by the Ravinia Festival). witnessing the damage and struggle for healing. “It’s a very human, very relatable piece,” Robinson says. “There’s a lot of societal pressure that Charles deals with, and even if someone hasn’t been the victim of abuse, they can understand what it’s like to be different, to be an outsider, and all the trials that go along with that.” “I think that there’s a space for everybody to walk away feeling some kind of universal theme, within this very specific story,” Brown adds. Blanchard also sees a larger message within the particular contours of Blow’s memoir. “Anybody who comes to see this will understand what Charles persevered through, and we know he’s still working and he’s still productive,” he says. “The story’s not finished—this is just one chapter.” The powerful new stories of contemporary Black operas bring together individual private experiences that communicate the shared humanity in all of us and provide a charge for the future of the art form. Seeing a work like Fire on the great opera stages of the world “is something that can help propel some other little kids forward into wanting to become composers,” Blanchard says. “And that’s my hope. That’s my dream.” Naomi André is a professor at the University of Michigan and the author of Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement. Adapted from an article commissioned and published by the Metropolitan Opera, 2021. Photo: Rose Callahan Librettist Kasi Lemmons and composer Terence Blanchard take their bows at the Metropolitan Opera’s opening-night curtain call,September 27,2021.