Met premieres Blanchard’s `Champion,’ an `opera in jazz’

By MIKE SILVERMAN
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” proved a sell-out hit at the Metropolitan Opera in 2021. So general manager Peter Gelb wasted no time lining up the composer’s other opera for the current season. That set the clock ticking for Blanchard and his collaborators to adapt a relatively small-scale work to the vast resources of the nation’s premiere opera house. “Champion” opens April 10 at the Met for nine performances. Blanchard calls it an opera in jazz. It’s based on the troubled life of prizefighter Emile Griffith and premiered at Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2013. Griffith knocked out Benny Paret in a welterweight title bout in 1962. Paret died 10 days later and Griffith was haunted by guilt.