After 138 Years, a Black Composer Arrives at the Met
The New York Times
Terence Blanchard, a jazz trumpeter best known for scoring Spike Lee films, reopens the opera house with “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.”
In 1919, William Grant Still was in his 20s — many years from the eminence he would later enjoy as the widely acknowledged “dean” of Black American composers.
But he had already begun to write operas, and he boldly approached the nation’s most important company: the Metropolitan Opera in New York. We have no evidence he got an answer.
Two decades later, Still was far more established, with his “Afro-American Symphony” widely performed. In 1935, he sent the Met “Blue Steel,” its music infused with jazz and spirituals. “Not worthy of consideration,” a company official wrote in an internal submissions ledger.
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