Fire shut up in my bones opera6/12/2023 When Chester sexually abuses him, he is too horrified and ashamed to say anything.Īdult Charles begins to weep as he recoils from these memories, while Destiny reminds him that there is no escape.Īs Charles grows into a teenager, he is full of confusion and rage. One day, his cousin Chester comes to visit. Char'es-Baby dreams of a different life, collecting “treasure” from the junkyard while Loneliness sings to him. ![]() Billie and her five sons move in with Uncle Paul. She doesn't shoot, but Billie tosses Spinner out. When she hears that he's flirting with other women, she confronts him at gunpoint. ![]() Her husband, Spinner, is a womanizing spendthrift. ![]() Billie works in a chicken factory, but she dreams of Char'es-Baby getting a good education and escaping their town. He is desperate for affection, but Billie is too frazzled to give him the validation that he craves. He begins reliving memories from his childhood.Ĭharles' seven-year-old self, Char'es-Baby, talks to his mother, Billie. Destiny sings to him, calling him back to his childhood home. And the company is exactly right: Fire Shut Up in My Bones is a simply wonderful reason to return to the opera.Company: Lyric Opera of Chicago Performance DatesĬharles Blow, age 20, drives down a Louisiana backroad with a gun in the passenger seat. In contrast to the Met’s sometimes less than enthusiastic treatment of new operas, the company has heaped luxury upon this show, including dauntless conducting by music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a silky smooth ID check, and an eight-performance run. Now, given a complex and exacting prima donna vehicle, Moore has left blood on the stage in a performance comparable in effect to Karita Mattila’s Salome or Anna Netrebko’s Manon Lescaut. The diva’s spotty Met career thus far has included some strong performances of Aida as well as a Madama Butterfly as ravishing as I ever hope to hear. This time around she has added to her repertoire of bewitching effects a glimmering high pianissimo and a voluptuous richness in middle voice that would not be out of place for Wagner’s Kundry.Īngel Blue as Destiny, Walter Russell III as Char’es-Baby, Latonia Moore as Billie, and Will Liverman as Charles in Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” Ken Howard / Met Operaīut, just as Gypsy ends up being about Madame Rose, soprano Latonia Moore as Charles’s mother Billie deftly picks up Fire Shut Up in My Bones, drops it securely in her pocketbook and saunters home with her new property. Soprano Angel Blue took on a curious track of Muse-like roles with portentous names like “Destiny” and “Loneliness” with the golden tone and radiant stage presence we know so well from her Porgy and Bess two years ago. ![]() And in more reflective moments, he revealed a piano sound so delicious you couldn’t help falling in love with him purely on the basis of timbre. Baritone Will Liverman took his lyric voice to the very limits of its capabilities in Charles’s violently emotional arias. Trimmed of perhaps 20 minutes of restatement and filigree, I think it would be a clear winner.Īt whatever length, this opera offers abundant vocal and dramatic opportunities to the cast. At its current length of two and a half hours, Fire Shut Up in My Bones is in the running for best American opera of the 21st century. But in the context of the opera, it feels like we are hearing the same story repeatedly, without even any Rashomon-like variation. Every one of these musical solutions is honest, adept and, in isolation, deeply moving.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |