The Life of Malcolm X at the New York Opera

The life of Malcolm X, icon of the cause of black people in the United States and assassinated in 1965, is revisited on the stage of the prestigious Metropolitan Opera in New York.

The opera X : The Life and Times of Malcolm X is a revival of a first version in the mid-1980s in a new Afrofuturist style, a current of thought and aesthetic that has run through the history of African-American art since the 1960s. The piece had been performed very little before to be brought back in 2021 to Detroit, in the north of the country, then this fall to New York, the American cultural capital. In Luxembourg, Kinepolis cinemas will broadcast a recording of the work tomorrow as part of the Met Opera Live program.

At the Met Opera in Manhattan, the work is composed by Anthony Davis, the libretto written by Thulani Davis, with Robert O’Hara conducting, and baritone Will Liverman in the title role. It retraces the thirty-nine years of the life of Malcolm Little, born in 1925, who became Malcolm X, one of the most influential radical civil rights activists before his assassination in February 1965, in the New York district of Harlem. His violent death – for which two black American men were exonerated in 2021 and compensated just a year ago, after twenty years in prison – was a thunderbolt and a tragedy, experts explain.

The revival of the opera tries out the Afrofuturist aesthetic: an enormous replica of a spaceship swirls above the stage on which the choir artists wear precolonial-inspired clothing, mixed with fashion taken from Science fiction. Operatic music – contemporary classical with accents of jazz – is accompanied by a troupe of dancers.

For composer Anthony Davis, “it’s not about trying to do an accurate portrayal of Malcolm, but about trying to bring to life all the ideas and concepts that he was so involved with.” Because, according to the musician, “Malcolm is a tragic hero.”

Nearly sixty years after the disappearance of the former leader of the radical Nation of Islam group and three years after the demonstrations of the Black Lives Matter movement, this opera takes on a political dimension. According to Anthony Davis, “the awakening we witnessed after George Floyd (Editor’s note: killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020) has rekindled the urgency to do better in terms of diversity in the world of classical music”. Until recently, “so many people, ideas and aesthetic styles were on the sidelines,” laments the artist, who thinks that the United States is now “more open.” The story of Malcolm

For Leah Hawkins, the soprano singer who plays both Louise Little, the mother of Malcolm public should get used to it (…) and not an exceptional event.” The movement is slowly taking off in the world of classical music, recognizes Leah Hawkins.

The Met Opera has made a point of welcoming more contemporary and diverse productions such as Fire in 2021 and Champion in 2022, both composed by trumpeter Terence Blanchard. The latter had also signed the album in 1993 The Malcolm X Jazz Suitein addition to his biographical fresco soundtrack Malcolm X (1992), by Spike Lee – for which Blanchard is the usual composer –, with Denzel Washington in the title role.

The opera X also has educational virtues, say Anthony Davis and Leah Hawkins. “I know lots of people who have never read The Autobiography of Malcolm, who know nothing about her story,” admits the singer, who “thinks it is important to bring such a character on stage in order to educate people.” This is all the more essential, adds Anthony Davis, in a country hyperpolarized on social issues and which is divided between progressives and conservatives, between different cultural groups. And this, just one year before the presidential election.

The opera will be broadcast on Saturday at 6:55 p.m. at Kinepolis Kirchberg and Belval, as well as Utopia.