by Bailey Basham, Messenger Staff Writer

Sewanee’s first streaming event as a part of the partnership with The New York Metropolitan Opera’s live transmission series, Live in HD, begins tomorrow, Saturday, Oct. 23, with the acclaimed operatic performance, “Fire Shut Up In My Bones.”

Late last year, the University became one of 2,200 theatres and performing arts centers in more than 70 countries to host the Live in HD series in an effort to reach new audiences. The Met has an 80-year legacy of broadcasting performances to radio listeners around the world via the Toll Brothers–Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network. This practice laid the foundation for the Live in HD series.

“These broadcasts helped to make an opera lover out of me,” said Stephen Miller, chair of the Department of Music. “I grew up in rural Kansas, not exactly a place conducive to opera productions, and I just never saw them growing up, or even for quite a few years in early adulthood. But with these live broadcasts, from around 2006, I became more and more entranced by the musical, vocal and emotional power of these works.”

In a performance composed by Grammy Award–winning jazz musician Terence Blanchard and conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Charles M. Blow’s 2015 memoir comes to life on stage, detailing Blow’s experience growing up in a segregated Louisiana town. Blow, the baby of the family who clings madly to his mother, is forced to navigate the pain and confusion of being preyed upon by a cousin and an uncle while at the same time feeling a recurrent attraction to men.

This is the first opera by a Black composer to be presented on the Met’s stage.

“Just the thought that in the 138-year history of the Metropolitan Opera they’ve never previously done a work by a Black composer is stunning. We’re very excited that the first Ralston Room live broadcast of a Met production will be this one,” said Miller. “I’ve watched dozens if not hundreds of pre-recorded operas, and none of those experiences can compare to that of Live in HD.”

“Fire Shut Up In My Bones” will make its Sewanee debut in the William Ralston Listening Room located in duPont Library at noon CDT and is estimated to run for three hours and 10 minutes. The University will announce an encore screening of a recorded version at a later date. “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” addresses adult themes and contains some adult language.

To check for ticket availability, email <ralstonlistening@sewanee.edu>. For a complete schedule of the Met’s Live in HD series, visit <www.metopera.org/season/in-cinemas>.

Masks are required inside University buildings.

UPDATE!

We arts-types at the University are absolutely thrilled that the Met Opera Live in HD series is coming to Sewanee, specifically to the Ralston Room in duPont library. For more info on the new relationship between the Met and Sewanee, see the front-page story in today's issue of the Mountain Messenger.
Since that story was assembled, however, a technical problem has prevented our showing tomorrow's broadcast. It was to have been a live performance of Blanchard and Lemmons's Fire Shut Up in My Bones, an operatic treatment of the Charles Blow memoir, and the first work ever on the Met stage with a Black composer.
In the next week or two, we do expect to show a pre-recorded version of that same opera in the Ralston Room, and ticket purchasing information will be distributed.