Two Extraordinary American Operas Receive Their Metropolitan Premieres
At New York City Opera’s (NYCO) 1986 premiere of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, Manhattan audiences witnessed an early instance of what would quickly become a subgenre. In investigating a figure so fresh in their viewers’ consciousness — Malcolm X had died only two decades earlier — composer Anthony Davis, librettist Thulani Davis, and storyboarder Christopher Davis (all related) began a trend of weaving recent realities into operatic tales. No longer could spectators divorce their lives from the plot they saw onstage; in this case, most of them had lived through it.