In its 138 years, America's leading opera house, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, had never staged an opera by a Black composer – until now. The Met opened its new season with a production of "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" by jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard. New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu talked with six-time Grammy-winner Blanchard about his opera, inspired by a memoir by Charles Blow, about "a boy of peculiar grace" growing up in small-town Louisiana in the 1970s and '80s.
Air Date: Nov 7, 2021
