The Metropolitan Opera of New York opened its doors in 1883 and in its 300-year history it has staged about 300 titles: none so far but by an African-American composer.
It is an injustice that is about to be repaired: after more than a year of closure due to Covid, a period of time that saw the Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice in the square, the famous temple of opera will reopen at public on Monday with "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" by Terence Blanchard, an African-American trumpeter and composer famous for the soundtracks of Spike Lee's films.
"It's a phenomenal honor, but a bittersweet moment", Blanchard told the "New York Times": "I just went to St. Louis where I listened to William Grant Still's 'Highway 1, USA': I'm obviously not the first person qualified to have arrived here ".
Considered the dean of African-American composers, Still had knocked several times and for decades on the doors of the Met and had always been rejected, most recently in 1942 with the opera "Troubled Island" on the Haitian revolution and libretto written by Langston Hughes. "Logically the Met was our first goal", recalled the musician after yet another "no": "It would be yet another waste of time to go into details on a work that is theimmature product of two amateurs ", was then the verdict of the theater.
Still was not the only African-American composer to come forward with the Met unnecessarily, but in the end it was the Met, with general manager Peter Gelb, who knocked on Blanchard's door, speeding up the tempo and guaranteeing the work of 'African-American pride of place at the opening of the new season which will also mark the resurrection of the theater after near bankruptcy due to the pandemic: "The Black Lives Matter movement had a strong impact at a time when theaters and opera are at the center of attention for their choices of social responsibility ", explained Gelb:" It was important that the Met had an answer ".
