American jazz composer-trumpeter Terence Blanchard infuses Fire Shut Up In My Bones with extended musical monologues, gospel choruses, and unpredictable melodies.

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American jazz composer-trumpeter Terence Blanchard infuses Fire Shut Up In My Bones with extended musical monologues, gospel choruses, and unpredictable melodies.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Grammy Award–winning jazz musician and composer Terence Blanchard’s adaptation of Charles M. Blow’s moving 2014 memoir, which The New York Times praised after its 2019 world premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis as “exquisite”, “bold and affecting” and “subtly powerful”.

Featuring a libretto by filmmaker Kasi Lemmons, Fire Shut Up In My Bones tells a poignant and profound story about a young man’s journey to overcome a life of trauma and hardship.

Charles M. Blow’s mother was a fiercely driven woman with five sons, brass knuckles in her glovebox and a job plucking poultry at a factory near their segregated Louisiana town, where slavery’s legacy felt close. When her philandering husband finally pushed her over the edge, she fired a pistol at his fleeing back, missing every shot thanks to “love that blurred her vision and bent the barrel”.

Charles was the baby of the family, strongly attached to his “do-right” mother. Until one day that divided his life into Before and After – the day an older cousin took advantage of the young boy.

The story of how Charles escaped that world to become one of America’s most innovative and respected public figures is a stirring redemptive journey that works its way into the deepest chambers of the heart.

Baritone Will Liverman, one of opera’s most exciting young artists who is quickly gaining a reputation for his compelling performances at opera houses across the world, stars as Charles, alongside sopranos Angel Blue and Latonia Moore.

James Robinson and Camille A. Brown - two of the creators of the Met’s sensational recent production of Porgy and Bess - co-direct this new staging.

Fire Shut Up In My Bones is sung in English with English subtitles.

A screening of the broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera 2021-22 Season in New York.

Please Note: the dates of Metropolitan Opera productions may be subject to change.

Content Advisory: Fire Shut Up in My Bones addresses adult themes and contains some adult language.

Duration 3 hours 20 minutes, including 1 interval.


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