(Credit: Henry Adebonojo) The Metropolitan Opera has announced that it will stage Terence Blanchard and Michael Cristofer’s opera “Champion” in April 2023. The announcement comes on the heels of a very successful run of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” which opened the company’s 2021-22 season. “Champion” is based on the life of African American boxer Emile Griffith. The opera {…}
Opera Parallèle will team up with SFJAZZ to present an online broadcast of Terence Blanchard’s “Champion” on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020. The broadcast presents the 2016 staging of the opera at SFJAZZ with a cast featuring baritone Arthur Woodley as Old Emile Griffith, mezzo-soprano Karen Slack as Emelda Griffith, Emile’s mother; baritone Robert Orth as Howie Albert, Emile’s trainer; and {…}
Boston Lyric Opera has announced the revamped 2020-21 season. The company plans to reschedule productions of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” and Blanchard and Cristofer’s Jazz opera “Champion” for the 2021-22 season while Humperdinck’s “Hansel und Gretel” will be postponed for a future date. Instead, BLO will offer operatic content through outdoor performances in the fall 2020 and spring 2021, as well {…}
Terence Blanchard is one of the most versatile musicians in the world. Born on March 13, 1962, in New Orleans, Louisiana as an only child, his father Joseph Oliver Blanchard was a part-time opera singer. The young Terence began playing piano at five and then started on trump at age eight. He was a close friend of Wynton Marsalis from {…}
(Credit: Ken Howard) Terrence Blanchard and Michael Cristofer’s “Champion” is termed an “opera in jazz,” a unique choice of words. There are a lot of operas in the history of the artform that have gone under the designation of “jazz opera,” but the choice here speaks to Blanchard’s decision to use the full range of jazz expression in the context {…}
