X: the Life and Times of Malcom X

Event Notes

Ticket pricing is inclusive of all applicable fees.

Met Premiere!

Anthony Davis’s groundbreaking opera, which premiered in 1986, arrives at the Met at long last. Robert O’Hara, who was nominated for a Tony Award in 2020 for his direction of Slave Play, oversees a new staging that imagines Malcolm as an everyman whose story transcends time and space. A cast of breakout artists take part in the operatic retelling of Malcom X’s life. Baritone Will Liverman, who triumphed in the Met premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, sings Malcolm. Soprano Leah Hawkins plays his mother, Louise; mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis is his sister Ella; bass-baritone Michael Sumuel is his brother Reginald; and tenor Victor Ryan Robertson is the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. Kazem Abdullah conducts the newly revised score, which provides a layered, jazz-inflected setting for the esteemed writer Thulani Davis’s libretto.

Kazem Abdullah (Conductor), Leah Hawkins (Louise/Betty), Raehann Bryce-Davis (Ella), Victor Ryan Robertson (Elijah/Street), Will Liverman (Malcolm), Michael Sumuel (Reginald)

Live in HD: November 18, 2023
Librettist: Thulani Davis
Production: Robert O’Hara
Set Designer: Clint Ramos
Costume Designer: Dede Ayite
Lighting Designer: Alex Jainchill
Projection Designer: Yee Eun Nam
Choreographer: Rickey Tripp

 

Pre Event Lecture

Presented by: Alan Mann

Alan Mann, artistic Director of Opera Theater of Connecticut, is also a renowned guest speaker, known for his Opera Talks—a series of informal, informative talks on operas and composers. He has been a “Special Lecturer” on many cruises, including an upcoming transatlantic trip with Royal Caribbean, and has been asked to speak before such groups as Evergreen Woods, Elim Park, and the Schiller Shoreline Institute for Lifelong Learning (SSILL). He has also served as Master of Ceremonies for numerous concerts across the country, punctuating them with interesting anecdotes and sharing his witty insights and knowledge of the “human” side of opera with the audience.

Mr. Mann frequently serves as a judge for various competitions, including The Jenny Lind National Competition for Sopranos, The Connecticut Opera Guild’s National Vocal Competition, The San Antonio Opera Competition, and Opera Theater of Connecticut’s Vocal Competition, as well as the English-Speaking Union’s Shakespeare competition.

His work in professional theater and opera has taken him from New York’s Lincoln Center to London’s West End to the Edinburgh Festival to the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival to The Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy to New York’s Broadway. His directing assignments span traditional opera, contemporary opera, comic opera, musical theater, and classic and modern theater.