The Metropolitan Opera broadcast in cinemas on Saturday X: The Life and Times of Malcolm, opera by Anthony Davis. Coming after Dead Man Walkingand before Florencia in the Amazons on December 9, this broadcast materializes the Met’s commitment to repertoire renewal. But not only…
Having recently seen Fire Shut Up in My Bones And Champion by Terence Blanchard, we are entitled to imagine that the opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm is part of this ferment of lyrical creations on subjects addressed more than others to the African-American community. One could even think that, in the vein of operas derived from cinematographic works (like Dead Man Walking Or Marnie), it could arise from the film Malcolm directed in 1992 by Spike Lee.
It is not so. X: The Life and Times of Malcolm is an opera created 38 years ago, in 1985 and, on stage, at the New York City Opera (next to the Met), in September 1986. It was then a beginning for operas with contemporary political subjects. Nixon in China And The Death of Klinghoffer by John Adams are barely later, but have acquired more notoriety.
Family affair
A twenty-year silence followed the creation of Anthony Davis’ opera, only resumed in 2006. From now on, while the Metropolitan Opera is engaged in a double communitarian policy (an orientation proven by the address, now , to the Hispanic community through the order of Florencia in the Amazon, created this week) and repertoire renewal, it would have been quite unfair not to include this pioneering work.
In practice, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm is a family affair, since Anthony Davis’ opera is composed on a plot imagined by his brother Christopher and a libretto written by their cousin Thulani. The work has several qualities. For example, the management of dramatic breathing through the mixture of musical genres and dance episodes, luxuriously treated at the Met. The symbiosis of styles and sometimes unusual instrumentations come from the fact that a jazz ensemble is grafted onto the traditional orchestra, which creates more or less improvised spaces of freedom, and that the color of the saxophone resonates more than in the traditional orchestra. ‘habit. Davis thus draws on the black roots of American music (Ellington for example). This is logical and consistent with the point.
Musically, there is sharp rhythmic work and the skillful use of certain ranges, such as the tense writing for tenor signifying the ascendancy of the influential religious leader Elijah Muhammad superbly assumed by Victor Ryan Robertson. Finally, the articulation of the opera in 3 acts and 12 scenes forms a fair and solid chronological fresco which allows the holder of the title role, Will
Liverman, who appears at the end of Act I, to play Malcolm X at various stages of his activist journey. We will admire the dramatic, scenographic and musical success of the prayer at the mosque in IIIe act.
Flying saucer
The production, tested in Detroit last season, instills a few scares at the beginning with this spaceship fallen in the middle of the Met – in fact the setting of the room where Malcolm scenographer Clint Ramos, who symbolizes the future and utopias, serves as support for a number of relevant projections (names of victims, slogans). Director Robert O’Hara and costume designer Dede Ayite succeed very well in this superposition between history and futurism responding to the ideals conveyed by Malcolm X.
But the question posed by the programming of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm at the cinema seven months later Champion, it is (as in other places and other contexts, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin) that of the sense of measure. We have already discussed this in The duty with the Quebec chef. For him, sometimes you have to “force” to induce change. But, on the other side of the barrier, what is the dose (and for how long) of these militant operas, without real tunes, in which we sometimes repeat the same words or syllables on ostinatos, as the public who, until further informed, has not yet been replaced in the rooms by the above-mentioned communities, will agree to support obediently?
The Metropolitan Opera, alone, will have statistics in theaters in New York and in cinemas all over the world, to judge and, ultimately, maintain, moderate or accelerate the pace of its revolution.