photo AFP Angela Weiss
The life of Malcolm The work is composed by Anthony Davis, the libretto written by Thulani Davis, with Robert O’Hara directing, and baritone Will Liverman in the title role.
The opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X is a revival of a first version given in the mid-1980s in a new Afrofuturist style, a current of thought and aesthetic which runs through the history of African-American art since the 1960s. The opera had been very little performed before being remounted in 2021 in Detroit, in the north of the country, then this fall in the American cultural capital.
The opera traces the 39 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 Harlem, in northern Manhattan. His violent death – for which two black American men were exonerated in 2021 and compensated just a year ago after 20 years in prison – was a thunderclap 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 pre-colonial-inspired clothing mixed with drawn-out fashion. science fiction. Operatic music – contemporary classical with accents of jazz – is accompanied by a troupe of dancers.
For composer Anthony Davis, it is not a question of “ not to try to paint an accurate portrait of Malcolm, but to try to bring to life all the ideas and concepts in which he was so involved.e “. Because, according to the musician, “ Malcolm is a tragic hero “. Nearly 60 years after the disappearance of the former leader of the radical group “Nation of Islam” and three years after the demonstrations of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, this opera takes on a political dimension.
For Anthony Davis, “ the awakening we witnessed after George Floyd » – a black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020 which preceded anti-racism protests across the country – “ has rekindled the urgency to do better in terms of diversity in the classical music world “. Until recently, ” so many people, ideas and aesthetic styles were on the sidelines “, deplores the artist who thinks that the United States is now ” more open ».
For Leah Hawkins, the soprano singer who plays both Malcolm X’s mother, Louise Little, and his wife, Betty Shabazz, such a black artistic experience on stage ” is something that should be normal (…) to which the public should get used to (…) and not an exceptional event “. The movement is slowly taking off in the world of classical music, she admits.
The Met Opera has made a point of welcoming more contemporary productions and issues of diversity such as Fire in 2021 and Champion in 2022, both composed by jazzman Terence Blanchard. X also has educational virtues, say Anthony Davis and Leah Hawkins.
« I know plenty of people who have never read his autobiography and who know nothing about his 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 story of Malcolm a slice of America that isn’t always told “, notably on the ” racism », Estimates Anthony Davis.
Maggy Donaldson © Agence France-Presse
2023-11-03 14:38:18
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