Terence Blanchard Is The First Black Composer At The Metropolitan Opera

'Terence Blanchard joined The Takeaway with host Melissa Harris-Perry. Terence Blanchard is a 6-time Grammy winner, jazz trumpet player and composer of over 40 film scores, earning him a BAFTA and Academy Award nominee for Best Original Score for Spike Lee’s 2018 film, BlacKkKlansman. Blanchard also happens to write operas. He composed Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on Charles Blow’s memoir of the same title, and it is the first opera by a Black composer to be housed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.  Blanchard and librettist, Kasi Lemmons, give music and lyrics to Blow’s story about growing up in rural Louisiana, surviving sexual abuse, and navigating the oppressive restrictions of masculinity, and it is Blanchard’s second opera House after premiering at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2019.'