Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 5 - Blue

23 | Lyric Opera of Chicago During the pandemic, it was hard to think about Blue , or much of anything, while in my devastated community in Harlem. It was difficult not to feel utterly defeated — though not difficult at all for me to see my face superimposed over George Floyd’s. I was angry and frightened, living in an increasingly terrifying, divisive country — where a white police officer, in broad daylight, in uniform, snuffed out the life of an unarmed, handcuffed Black man. At first, the opera was referred to in shorthand as “Race Opera.” I began to attach new titles to each draft: “No Name Necessary,” “The Hunted,” “Targets,” “Black Boy,” — even “Say My Name.” Police officers I spoke to referred to their uniform as “blues”: “When I’m in my blues.” As the opera begins, the audience sees the central character, The Father, changing from his civilian clothes into his police blues. I kept cycling through titles: “Black Blue,” “Black In Blue,” “Black Is Blue.” But it seemed better to be more ambiguous, to refer equally to a mood, a uniform, a kind of day, a kind of music. I wrote to Jeanine, and we decided we should call it “Blue.” When the final curtain fell on opening night, there was a long silence, followed by gasps, audible weeping, and then, finally, applause. Blue has been referred to as a “protest opera” and “the opera about police violence.” I suppose both are true. But I did not set out with that goal. I wrote it from an obsessive need and sense of responsibility to tell an intimate story behind the numbing numbers of boys and men who are killed. But here we are now: art imitating life, life imitating art. Unfortunately, the themes in Blue have no expiration date. I add my voice to those of the characters singing in the opera, and to those of the real families suffering great losses. Our eyes will never be free of tears. The Father,putting on his“blues.” Karli Cadel - The Glimmerglass Festival