Black and Blue – Chicago Reader

The program for Blue, now onstage at Lyric Opera, includes a note from librettist and director Tazewell Thompson about a pivotal moment in the development of the piece, which he wrote with prolific Broadway and film composer Jeanine Tesori.

Commissioned in 2015 by Glimmerglass Festival artistic director Francesca Zambello, who wanted an opera “about race in America, about where we are now as a people dealing with race,” Blue is the tightly constructed story of a three-person Black family in contemporary Harlem—a nuclear family so representative they are named only by their familial title: mother, father, and son.

Blue
Through 12/1: Wed 11/20 7 PM, Fri 11/22 7 PM, Tue 11/26 7 PM, Sun 12/1 2 PM; ASL interpretation and sound shirt Wed 11/20, audio description and touch tour Sun 12/1;  Lyric Opera, 20 N. Wacker, 312-827-5600, lyricopera.org, $49-$319; in English with projected English titles

The first act introduces the parents as a young couple deeply in love and awaiting the birth of their son. The mother runs her own restaurant, and in Thompson’s original concept, he tells us, the father is a struggling saxophone player. Their son, who quickly advances from treasured infant to rebellious teen, is dead by the opening of the second act—shot (in an incident the audience does not see) by police at a protest demonstration. As the creative team continued to meet to develop the opera, Tazewell writes, it was Tesori who wondered if, instead of playing the saxophone, the father could be a cop.

Tazewell notes that he initially rejected that idea. Incensed by continuing reports of police shootings of unarmed Black youths and men, and by his own experiences as a Black man, he did not want to make his protagonist a policeman  until, “despite myself,” he saw the devastatingly effective possibilities.

The father, movingly portrayed at Lyric by bass Kenneth Kellogg (who also sang this role in the Glimmerglass premiere in 2019), is caught in a vise. He has provided for his family as a police officer, “keeping the city safe.” But as his beloved teenage son sees it, he’s “pathetic”—a Black man in a “blue clown suit—keeping it safe for the white man.”  

The son (Ryan Opera Center tenor Travon D. Walker) is determined to keep protesting in the streets; his father only wants him to stay safe. They argue over it and come to blows. When the son is killed, the father’s sorrow and anger, complicated by his own implication as part of the system, is gut-wrenching.

There are some light moments in the first act—sparkling trios and quartets when the young parents share news of the pregnancy, and then of their son’s birth with their separate groups of friends. But even here, the foreshadowing is grim. “Thou shalt not bring Black boys into this world,” the girlfriends warn.

Mother, exquisitely sung by mezzo-soprano Zoie Reams, is a vital force in the first act; by the second, she has completely withdrawn, mummified by her grief. A preacher, the Reverend (Norman Garrett), attempts to bring Father to a place of “change and forgiveness.” They share a memorable bass duet, and there’s a funeral scene with a powerful vocal ensemble, but, to the creators’ credit, there’s no easy reconciliation here.

Thompson, drawing on his skills as playwright and director, has written a libretto that manages to be both tightly wound and poetic, and Tesori’s vocal score serves his words well, even lyrically, while her orchestral writing, beginning with the opera’s menacing opening rumble, gives voice to every emotional nuance.

Sets and lighting, in a perfect marriage by Donald Eastman and Robert Wierzel, respectively, are starkly effective; guest conductor Joseph Young leads the fine Lyric Opera Orchestra.    

In an ambiguous epilogue, the little family is reunited at a table prepared by the mother. It’s a scene that might transpire only in her head.