Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Anthony Davis’s fascinating X: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MALCOLM X makes its belated premiere at the Metropolitan Opera

• By drediman
• November 21, 2023
• No Comments

This fall, Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X made its long-awaited debut at the Metropolitan Opera (the production is a co-presentation with Detroit Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opera Omaha, and Seattle Opera). Originally staged by the now-defunct New York City Opera, the 1986 work is an operatic overview of Malcolm X’s life, from his childhood in Depression-era Lansing to his assassination in New York in 1965.

As with Malcolm X’s pursuit of illumination, there’s a searching quality that permeates the opera, particularly as manifested by Davis’s fascinating, restless score. It’s a layered composition that that stealthily moves between musical styles, from Western opera to rhythmic African dance to American jazz. There’s a similar expansiveness in Thulani Davis’s libretto, which shows rather than tells, all the while taking into account the complexity of the forces at play in the protagonist’s story. As such, audiences are encouraged to reflect deeply during each step of Malcom X’s journey. The staging by Robert O’Hara (who also directed Jeremy O. Harris’s caustic Slave Play on Broadway) gives the piece an Afro-futurist aesthetic that effectively collapses time and space, imbuing a cosmic and mystic resonance to Malcom X’s life’s work. Even if the production is clunkily blocked at times (e.g., the incorporation of Rickey Tripp’s choreography seems clumsily tacked on), the overall conception gives a sense of the profound.

Maestro Kazem Abdullah – at home with the score’s myriad of musical genres – skillfully draws the composition’s many textures to the fore without losing sight of Davis’s larger design. In the title role, sturdily-voiced baritone Will Liverman valiantly delivers a grounded performance that gives a balanced view of the man. Another standout as Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad is tenor Victor Ryan Robertson, whose ringing voice and stately demeanor is ideal for the role.

RECOMMENDED

X: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MALCOLM X
Opera
The Metropolitan Opera
3 hours, 30 minutes (with two intermissions)
In repertory through December 2