Champion, the Opera

Champion, a new opera by Terence Blanchard with libretto by Michael Christofer, starred Ryan Speedo Green as the young Emile Griffith and Met veteran Eric Owens as the aged Emile, suffering from dementia (“Boxer Brain”). Champion was presented Live in HD at my local Boynton Beach movie theater yesterday. The opera took three hours plus a 30-minute intermission and kept me throughly entranced throughout.

Daniel Bergner’s biography of Ryan Speedo Green came to my attention six years ago at Chautauqua. Green was an apprentice with the Wolf Trap Opera Company a few years before that and my friend Elizabeth and her husband had hosted both Bergner and Green at their home in McLean VA. He wasn’t a star then, but he surely is now. Here is an excerpt from the first act of Champion.

The opera is based on the true story of Emile Griffith, a welterweight boxer who finds his way to a gay bar (the Met costumers went all out for that scene). In 1962 Emile encounters Benny Paret at a weigh-in. Paret hurls a homophobic slur at him. As they prepare for their fight, Paret continues to taunt Emile, who ultimately delivers so many blows that Paret falls into a coma and dies later in a hospital.

In Act II, Emile is haunted by the ghost of Benny Paret and eventually has a meeting with Paret’s son, Benny Jr. The voice and memories subside; Emile can now take life one day at a time. In an interview before the the opera began, composer Terence Blanchard tells Peter Gelb that the crux of the drama is “how the world forgives Emile for taking the life of his opponent, but when Emile loves a man, there is no forgiveness.”

Besides the close-ups, a great feature of the Met’s Live in HD productions are the interviews during intermission. Host Lawrence Brownlee gets details from Speedo Green (yes, his father named him after the swimsuit) about the extensive time he spent not only in rehearsing his arias, but also in training to look like a boxing champion. Well done, Speedo!

Here’s more about the production of Champion from the Met’s website:

Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green stars as the closeted young hatmaker-turned-prizefighter, who rises from obscurity to become world champion and, in one of the great tragedies in sports history, kills his homophobic archrival in the ring. Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads a stellar cast that also features bass-baritone Eric Owens as Griffith’s older self, haunted by the ghosts of his past. Soprano Latonia Moore is Emelda Griffith, the boxer’s estranged mother, alongside mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as bar owner Kathy Hagen. Director James Robinson—whose productions of Fire and Porgy and Bess brought down the house—oversees the staging, and Camille A. Brown, whose choreography electrified audiences in Fire and Porgy, also returns.

Last year I saw Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Terence Blanchard, based on the book by Charles M. Blow. It was the first opera the Met had ever done by a Black composer. In his interview with Blanchard, Met Director Peter Gelb affirms that the Met is seeking to expand its traditional offerings and appeal to a wider audience. One could see many Blacks in audience shots at the Met; at the Boynton Beach theater, there were maybe thirty people, all white. We all joined those in New York giving Champion a standing ovation.