Credit: Micah Shumake/Detroit Opera

Before heading to the Metropolitan Opera stage, Anthony Davis’ “X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X” will be performed at Opera Omaha.

This new production by Robert O’Hara tours significant locations in Malcolm X’s life. Some of the co-sponsoring locations include Detroit Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, and Seattle Opera.

O’Hara’s production builds off of two quotes by Malcolm X, “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today,” and “Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future.”

The director brings forward a theme of Afro-futurism, “a science-fiction-infused liberatory aesthetic,” as it relates to the timeline of the Civil Rights Movement. He says, “We are working in collusion with the past, present, and Afro-futurism in imagining, with a child-like wonder, a prophet in search of a future for our people, where the final gunshot is not the end of a legend but the beginning of a liberation.”

Adam Richardson, Whitney Morrison, Ronnita Miller, Joshua Conyers, Victor Robertson, and Charles Dennis make their Opera Omaha debut in this production with Gil Rose conducts.

“X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X” will be held at the Orpheum Theater in Omaha on Nov. 4 and 6, 2022.