The 2019 work Blue presents the moving story of a Black middle-class couple in Harlem, whose lives are shattered when their teenage son is shot by a white police officer. Compounding the heartbreak is the fact that the Father is a so-called "Black in Blue" — he serves on the very same police force. Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori's moving music brings to life Tazewell Thompson's probing, sensitive libretto. A co-production of Lyric, The Glimmerglass Festival, and Washington National Opera, Blue was named the Best New Opera of 2019 by the Music Critics Association of North America, and will be on stage at Lyric November 16 to December 1, 2024.
The timing of the composition and premiere of the work proved uncannily prescient, coming as it did just before the reckonings with racial injustice and examinations of law enforcement begun in 2020. The two-act opera opens when the Mother gathers her Girlfriends to celebrate the impending birth of her son. There is joy, but also notes of caution as the women discuss the dangerous lives of young Black men. Before long, we meet The Son as a teenager, full of creativity and idealism, and bridling at his parents' authority. His death, which takes place offstage, becomes all the more tragic because the family had been together in their kitchen only a short time before. After the tragedy, the Father and Mother and their community search for solace amidst powerful feelings of guilt, regret, and loss.