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Tanzina: You're listening to the voice of baritone Will Liverman singing Peculiar Grace from the opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones. It's the second opera from Terence Blanchard, a six-time Grammy winner, jazz trumpeter, and composer of over 40 scores. The Blanchard body of work earned him a BAFTA and an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score for Spike Lee's 2018 film, BlacKkKlansman.

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While it is Blanchard's second opera, it is his first and the first by a Black composer and an entirely Black cast to play at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Fire Shut Up in My Bones is based on a memoir of the same title written by New York Times columnist Charles Blow. Now, Blanchard and librettist Casey Lemons authored the music and lyrics, bringing to life Blow's story of growing up in rural Louisiana, surviving sexual abuse, and navigating the restrictions of narrowly defined masculinity. I sat down with Terence Blanchard to talk about his many accomplishments and his musical journey. Here's what he told me about his personal experience watching the opera at the Met.

Terence Blanchard: It's a bit of a surreal experience because part of me is still in disbelief that this is even happening, but another part of me is extremely proud of all of the efforts of everyone who's involved in the production, because those are some amazing singers, some of the most brilliant voices that I've heard, ever, and I don't know how to describe my feeling of being able to create something that allows them to display all of their talents and to see Camille create movement in a ballet that's just very unique and beautiful, as an incredible thing. It all starts with Casey Lemons' words, the libretto, she wrote a beautiful libretto, that's very poetic, but still very powerful.

Tanzina: Indeed, let's go to one aspect of that, and that is peculiar grace. For you, what do you hear in those words? I kept reflecting on them over and over again, every time they came back, every time we had to encounter them, again, this idea of being a boy with peculiar grace?

Terence Blanchard: The first thing that always pops in my mind is the idea of that isolation is existence in a community that you really want to belong to, experienced that growing up in New Orleans. Even though New Orleans is a music town, my neighborhood wasn't one that thought it was very cool to walk to the bus stop with a horn in your hand on the weekends gone to my lesson, or while I was sitting at the piano, in the big bay window on the front of my house, practicing my lesson, it wasn't the coolest thing for my boys to see me do that.

Wanting to still belong to that community, it hurts when people treat you differently because you are a little different.

The thing about it is there's a burning desire within you that you don't really get yet because you can be too young to understand it. With Charles, I thought his success, where he is in his life right now is a true testament to how resilient he's been and how strong he's been to not only withstand that but withstand the pain of being molested by a family member.

To me, his existence is evidence of how anyone who's struggling with this can overcome it. You can overcome anything if you put your mind and heart and soul into it. That's one of the main reasons why I wanted to do this story.

Tanzina: I knew that I was going to be coming to see the performance on a Friday night, and I think it was maybe on Tuesday or Wednesday night of that week, I was having dinner with some friends and saying, "I'm almost reluctant to go because I don't think I can cope with." The language I used was, "Molestation set to music." Luckily, many of the people who were at this dinner had actually seen the performance and immediately jumped to explain, not how it was staged, but to ease my mind that I would be able, even as a survivor, to sit through that, but can you talk to me a bit about that process of making sure that that moment wasn't molestation set to music.

Terence Blanchard: The first thought was, we didn't want to traumatize the actors. We have a young boy who's 13 years old, who's doing a brilliant job and we didn't want to put him through any of that. Then obviously, we wanted to make sure that the story wasn't totally about that, it was about overcoming that. When I talked to Jim Robinson, who directed it in St. Louis when we first did it, that was a concern of mine, and he said, "Don't worry, we're going to make sure that they don't even touch." That's why we put them on opposite sides of the bed, and we just let everything unfold through the dialogue.

We don't even get graphic in the dialogue, as you know, but it is a clear indication of what went down. I think the aftermath of the event is more violent than the actual act itself, it's when he says, "Come on, let's play the game again." He says, "No, I don't want to." That has a little more aggression in it than the actual molestation itself.

Tanzina: That 13-year old boy, his voice, I still don't even-- I don't even know what to do with it, his talent was as big as the Met itself.

Terence Blanchard: Walter Russell III, he is an amazing kid, and he's a kid, and I love that about him. He's brilliant, and during the rehearsals, it was amazing to watch him be brilliant in rehearsals and then soon as we took a break, he's making paper airplanes and running around playing with other kids. [chuckles] I love it because his parents are really great people, they understand what he's going through, they're allowing him still to be a kid. They're not helicopter parents or anything like that, they're normal people, which results in him being a normal kid.

His talent is boundless man/ I was talking about him the other day, and I told him, I said, "If you keep working at this, possibly one day, the Met could be putting on one of your productions." I really firmly believe that because he has that type of talent.

Tanzina: Yet, you were the first African-American composer to have your opera, and this is not your first opera, but it is the first opera at the Met for an African-American composer, do you understand this as a Black opera?

Terence Blanchard: No, we don't look at it that way. The reason for that is because we never even talked about it, it was in the aftermath of the first of the premiere that we realized that the cast was all Black. It wasn't something we set out to do, we just set out to really just tell Charles' story. We felt like it was a universal story, that a lot of people could relate to, and it just so happens that as we've done that, the entire cast is a Black cast. I'm very proud of that fact, because, as you can see, it's a cast filled with amazing talent, amazing talent, and it's not just on stage, we look at Camille Brown, who's a choreographer and co-director, she's a genius and she's amazing. Like I said earlier, Casey Lemons, her words are just powerful and very poetic.

Tanzina: There was one moment, that was definitely the most subversive Black people and the Met moment that I couldn't have even fathomed it until it happened, and it's the step show. As it happens, I'm thinking, this is really happening, this is a full-on probate at the Met and then the audience went absolutely berserk, just on their feet, to the rafters and I'm looking over I saw you, and you're looking up at the rafters, and I'm like, "This is incredible, this is that show at the Met."

Terence Blanchard: I love that moment in the opera. When we first did it in St. Louis, and I just always have to make this mentioned because there was talk of trying to cut the opera down, and one of the first things that some people wanted to cut was the step show, and I said, "Absolutely not, absolutely not. This is a huge part of our culture, this is a huge part of what people need to experience." It's a huge part of college life in HBCUs How can you tell Charles' story without having this be a part of it? I was making fun of the dancers. I was telling them from the dress rehearsal, even at the premiere, I'm like you dudes get applause, just walking on the stage. I said I've never seen that before man. You just walk on the stage and people go nuts. It's been a beautiful thing because that is one of the things that has resonated with a lot of people from the African American community because they're seeing themselves on the stage. Nobody thought they were to ever see that. I got to tell you this, Tanzina, it's the interesting thing about this production is that everybody in the production understands what this means.

The very first day of rehearsal, after we did Camille's movement exercises we sat down in a circle and we just talked, we talked the entire cast. We talked about the meaningfulness of putting this on, the meaningfulness of it being at the met, and their purpose for being there.

It was one of the most beautiful moments I've ever experienced in anything that I've done to see people in tears to see people excited about having their family members to come and see this.

Tanzina: I can absolutely. I could see that not only in the players in the conductor and how the conductor was also received again by the entire audience.

Terence Blanchard: Yes. Well, Yannick is an amazing person, let alone an amazing conductor. I don't even know how to describe him. I get such a warm feeling around him because he is one of the people who's been pushing for this. He's been saying, I love Verity. I love Puccini. I love Faulkner. He says, but we have to do stories that relate to people's lives today if we want opera to survive. I remember when he said that I told him, I said, "Listen, when we did my opera champion in New Orleans, there was a gentleman who was in the seventies who walked up to me and he said, is African American gentleman.

He said, Hey man if this is opera, I will come." That statement stuck with me and it made me realize, right, opera initially was music for the masses. We have to get back to that. We have to stop this elitist thing where we want people to come to the arts, no, the arts has to go to the people. We have to reach out and be relevant.

Tanzina: Talk a little bit about champion. That's your first opera, and it is about the life of a closeted gay boxer, Emile Griffith. Talk to me about the decision to do that story as opera.

Terence Blanchard: Well, and initially when they first commissioned me to write an opera, they wanted me to do an opera about hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. At the time I felt like it was too close. I didn't want to deal with that topic. I said maybe later, but not right now. I've always been a big boxing fan and my best friend who's also was a professional fighter his name is Michael Bent, he told me about the story of Emile's life and told me about the book Nine Ten and Out, which is his biography. One of the things in the book that Emile said that just blew me away. He said-- well, let me back up.

He fought a guy named Benny Perret three times, the first two times they each won the fight. The third time was going to be the deciding bout and Benny Perret wanted to get an edge on Emile. At that time, if you knew about somebody's sexuality, that wasn't something that you just talked about in public with people kept that to themselves. During the press conference, he was trying to get inside of Emile's head and he used a very derogatory term for gay male at the press conference. Emil was upset and he says, why is he saying these things? Come to the fight, they get into the fight Emile hits him 17 times within 7 seconds.

I forgot what round it was. Benny was knocked out, fell into a coma for 10 days, and died, and it was a devastating thing for Emile because they were friends. In his book, one of the things that he said that struck me, and it really hit me really hard. He said, "I killed the man and the world forgave me." He said, "But I love the man and the world will never forgive me." That was the reason why I wanted to do the book because I kept thinking about the first time I won an award, I turned and my wife gave her a kiss without thinking and just went up to the stage and grabbed my award. I thought about it he couldn't do that. He couldn't share his championship belt with someone he loved openly, and that to me is a shame.

Tanzina: It has a particular-- not just shame, but the tragedy that in the broadest sense the most maybe classical sense of tragic. I wonder if you could just reflect for a moment because you are a kind sort of many different forms of musical art. A true New Orleanian in that way. What is it that distinguishes opera for you? What are the stories that you are drawn to most specifically in an operatic form?

Terence Blanchard: Well, a lot of times with opera, man, it's all about tragedy, but it's also about love, La bohème is one of my favorite operas, and it's all about the pain, the joy, and the suffering of being in love and trying to navigate those waters. It's one of the reasons why I started to come back to opera. I wasn't really an opera fan for a long time because my father growing up, he loved opera and would play his opera records around the house. When he would do that, mostly you'd hit door slamming in the house, because people would be like, "Oh man, there he goes."

Years later, man, it started to resonate in my soul. When I would hear these recordings, I said, you know what, just as a composer I need to just really listen to this stuff a little more indebtedly. When I started to do that, I started to develop a real passion for it. Then all of a sudden opera theater St. Louis calls me to write an opera. They brought me to their season, which was the first time that I actually saw opera live on the stage, and then I was just totally hooked.

Tanzina: Is there another project directly on the horizon that we can look forward to?

Terence Blanchard: Well, after the gala of the night of the premiere, after the performance, Yannick the conductor that the Met is going to commission me to write another opera. You know it was so funny because hearing it you have mixed emotions, you go, "Man, that's great." Then another part of you is like, "Yes, but can I get a nap first." It's just a lot of work man. Writing it for two years and then you workshop it and then when we got here, we were in rehearsal for about five to six weeks.

Tanzina: I'm just putting out there. I want a woman's story next time. I want to see what Terrence Blanchard does with a black woman's story. There are so many untold ones, but I take any from you. That's my request.

Terence Blanchard: You know I'm going to tell my boss that one and she'll probably do the research.

Tanzina: I know she will actually, let me text the right person to put that request in for.

Terence Blanchard: Exactly.

Tanzina: Terence Blanchard award-winning musician, composer across genres. Thank you so much for joining us.

Terence Blanchard: Oh man. Thank you for having me. It was great seeing you and it was great talking to you.

[00:18:32] [END OF AUDIO]

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