After nearly nineteen months of silence, the Metropolitan Opera Company returned to live performance on September 27. The opera was a new one, a revised and expanded version of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, which had its premiere at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2019. The music is by Terence Blanchard, a jazz-oriented composer noted for his work in film, and the libretto is by Kasi Lemmons, based on a memoir by Charles M. Blow, a columnist for The New York Times. I attended the second performance, on October 1. Since this opera is the first by African-American creators to be produced by the Met, and since it was leapfrogged forward in the schedule to become the season opener under the extreme social pressures of the past year-and-a-half, it bears a burden of emotionally charged expectations, as well as a confusion of celebration and resistance as a signifier of the ongoing diversity offensive. Neither of these has any bearing on the artistic merit of the opera, so I’ll try to set them aside, and evaluate the piece and its presentation on the basis of my experience with it, with some words on the social and artistic implications of the occasion as afterword.
Perhaps it was not wise to introduce the work with words that at once leaned on ancient religio-cultural resonances and suggested impending provocation. As the fully-masked, vaxx-credentialed audience took its place (a rather subdued vibe in the hall), the Biblical quote that is the source of the opera’s (and memoir’s) title greeted us from the forecurtain. Our lesson of the evening was drawn from Chapter 20, Verse 9 of the distressing Book of Jeremiah, wherein the Lord threatens the visiting of all conceivable punishments upon the Israelites for their disobediences and false prophecies, then delivers them into the hand of King Nebucadnezzar for the years of the Babylonian Captivity. Derided for speaking aloud the word of the Lord, Jeremiah protests: “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and cannot.” This entire lamentation, Verses Seven through Eighteen, which careens among fears of persecution, assurances of the Lord’s protection, cries for vengeance, praise for the Lord’s deliverances, and curses on the day the prophet was born, is of the utmost unhinged eloquence. Settling into my seat, I prepared for a challenge flung in my face, a disturbance and an outcry—a Jeremiad. Another heavy expectation.
But Fire creates no such effect. For the most part it plays as a low-key, domesticated coming-of -age drama, not unpleasant but neutral in tone, with a happy ending in a sort of apotheosis of self-identification. It recounts the story of Charles (Will Liverman), a child “of peculiar grace”; his mother Billie (Latonia Moore), trying to hold the poverty-level household together while handling the no-good pater familias, Spinner; the sexual abuse of Charles by an older cousin, Chester; and Charles’ eventual victory in coming to grips with his rage and accepting his nature for what it is. Along the way, there’s a scene in a chicken-processing plant, a confrontation in a dive, an evangelical baptism, tentative searchings for heterosexual love, and a fraternity hazing. All this plays in a more or less naturalistic manner, but is framed by the presence of two allegorical figures, Destiny and Loneliness, rather as in Baroque opera, who hang around the course of the action. These are both sung by Angel Blue, who also, perplexingly, takes on the love interest character, Greta, who is a direct participant in the plot—the levels of reality wobble here, for anyone paying attention to such matters. Which I reckon we’re not supposed to do.