Fire Shut Up in My Bonesopens at the Metropolitan Opera on September 27.
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The Metropolitan Opera planned to reopen withTerence Blanchards2019 adaptationof Charles Blows memoirFire Shut Up in My Bones.
Live auditions were out of the question.
Could Liverman record the opening aria?
Liverman turned to the aria and read the line Prepare to die, motherfucker.
I thought,What am I getting myself into?
A few days later, we signed the contract.
The audition tape he sent us was a confirmation of what we already knew.
He has no trouble with the first part.
His challenge is to manage an intensity that rarely abates after the first explosion.
The throat and the emotions are so bound up together.
If youre angry, people can hear it in your voice.
But then, at the end, youve got nothing left.
Once Liverman was in, Blanchard got out needle and thread and refitted the part for him.
He fuses jazz and R&B and gospel with classical singing, so I immediately vibe with that.
When I hear those ninth and seventh chords, thats so easy for me to sing into.
Liverman exploits those connections in other contexts, too.
Liverman himself also writes.
But Liverman wanted to create and sing a more lighthearted show.
I wanted to tell a story of Black joy, one that people experience day to day.
And, he adds, playing piano in church teaches you something about improvisation.
Someone busts out in a song, you have to figure it out and go with it.
The Met moved upFireand the Lyric adoptedThe Factotumwhen they did partly because theyve come under heavy pressure to diversify.
But Liverman sees those opportunities as evidence of a more durable movement.
Were finally seeing Black stories being told that we can add to the canon, he says.
He mentionsChampion,Blanchards first opera, andBlue,by Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson.
Hes also alert, though, to the danger of being pigeonholed.
I never had dreams of opening the Met season.
I was always just content to sing somewhere.
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