The Metropolitan Opera premiere of “Fireplace Shut Up in My Bones,” on Sept. 27, 2021, was a momentous occasion. Doubly so: “Fireplace” was the corporate’s first staged opera after an 18-month pandemic closure, and it was, after 138 years, its first work by a Black composer.
The opera, with a rating by Terence Blanchard and a libretto by Kasi Lemmons, took on a few of the grandeur and pleasure of that second. The raucous fraternity step dance that opens the third act introduced down the home.
That step dance nonetheless stopped the present on Monday night, when “Fireplace” returned to the Met. Two and a half years later, the work is a take a look at case. The corporate has sharply elevated its weight loss plan of up to date operas — a few of which, together with “Fireplace,” bought very effectively as new productions. However how will these operas carry out once they’re introduced again, with out the identical promotional push?
On Monday, no less than, the viewers appeared sturdy and, because it was in the course of the preliminary run, notably numerous. And “Fireplace” stays a heartfelt piece, emanating a touching if obscure unhappiness. However with out the exhilarating sense of event it had at its Met premiere, the opera’s shortcomings had been clearer.
Based mostly on the New York Instances columnist Charles M. Blow’s memoir of his turbulent upbringing in Louisiana, “Fireplace” is a development of episodes — some upbeat, some forlorn. It takes the type of a search: The lonely Charles, his psyche wounded as a baby by his cousin’s sexual abuse and his mom’s actual however distracted love, appears to be like for belonging and therapeutic.
He tries church, fraternity membership, his siblings, a girl, one other girl, however none supply what he’s in search of; all need him to be totally different than he’s. Solely after a hasty, therapy-speak conclusion within the last minutes, presided over by an ethereal choir and the voice of his youthful self, can he lastly settle for himself and sing, “Now my life begins.”
His tone centered and safe, the bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Inexperienced was the very best change from the final run, along with his imposing top, physique and voice — particularly in Charles’s brooding soliloquies — making a poignant distinction with the character’s struggling and vulnerability.
However even Inexperienced can’t persuade us that his infinite singing in unison along with his youthful self, “Char’es-Child” (the treble Ethan Joseph), is something however a slipshod solution to hold the older Charles onstage in the course of the lengthy first act. And significantly early on, the density of the libretto makes the vocal strains a mouthful for the singers — and loads for the viewers to soak up, even with the Met’s seat-back subtitles.
When the work, which had its premiere at Opera Theater of St. Louis in 2019, was new, it appeared like charmingly idiosyncratic poetic license to present the primary soprano a human half to play in addition to the summary qualities of Future and Loneliness. However whereas Brittany Renee sings the tripartite position on the Met with a transparent, tender tone, it’s by no means fairly clear when she’s enjoying Future and when Loneliness — or what the excellence between the 2 is. (They each roughly encourage Charles’s worse instincts.)
As in “Champion,” which performed on the Met final 12 months, Blanchard generally offers disproportionate consideration to secondary characters, particularly moms. Ending the second act of “Fireplace” with an enormous aria for Charles’s mom, Billie (the hardworking however solely intermittently hovering soprano Latonia Moore), doesn’t get us deeper into her feelings than we’ve already gone, nevertheless it does distract from our concentrate on Charles and his ache.
On Monday, the soprano Kearstin Piper Brown made her firm debut sounding brilliant however creamy within the cameo position of Evelyn, with whom Charles loses his virginity. James Robinson and Camille A. Brown’s staging nonetheless moved fluidly between scenes. Performed with exact vitality underneath Evan Rogister, the principal conductor of Washington Nationwide Opera, the rating sounded leaner and fewer overpowering (in a great way) than in 2021.
However even with a few haunting tunes woven all through (as within the movie scores for which Blanchard is finest recognized), the music toggles blandly between lushly nameless sentiment and genially percussive bluesy swing — with a four-player rhythm part embedded within the orchestra, to restricted impact.
Brown’s choreography stays, because it was in 2021, the spotlight of the efficiency. The dream ballet of stunted, responsible homosexual want that opens the second act is extra eloquent, concise storytelling than the opera’s sung elements. And the step sequence, rightfully central to the Met’s advertising of “Fireplace,” nonetheless bristles with vitality, aggression, virtuosity.
But it surely says one thing about an opera when its most memorable moments are dance.
Fireplace Shut Up in My Bones
Continues by way of Could 2 on the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org.
