Opera on 3

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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Music: Classical: Opera

Programme presenting rare and fascinating operatic performances

Programme presenting rare and fascinating performances and vividly communicating the immediacy of the live experience

Opera on 3: Anthony Davis's X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X

Anthony Davis's X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X

BBC Radio 3 - Opera on 3, Anthony Davis's X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X

The moving and inspiring 1986 opera in its New York Metropolitan Opera premiere production

Anthony Davis's 1986 opera on the life of black human rights activist Malcolm X receives its New York Metropolitan Opera premiere production.

Anthony Davis’s 1986 opera is based on the life and death of the charismatic black human rights campaigner Malcolm X. It receives its Met premiere production this season as part of a programming policy to include work outside the traditionally accepted canon, work that speaks to contemporary life. It was an evening, said one critic, with profound impact.

Davis – Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz pianist, composer and educator – focuses on the essential scenes of Malcolm X’s life, from his traumatic childhood to his imprisonment, his conversion to Islam, his activism and, finally, his assassination in 1965. 

The vivid orchestral score includes Davis’s Episteme jazz octet (whose directions include "respond to Malcolm", "à la Jimmy Garrison" and "Miles Davis Funk!") and as well as improvisation incorporates swing, pop and contemporary classical styles.

"I imagined," says Davis, "an American opera that drew equally from the African diaspora and the European, where the immediacy of the improvised and subversive spirit of the blues meets the form and structure of a post-tonal language of Berg and Stravinsky." 

Recorded in November and presented by Debra Lew Harder with commentator Ira Siff.

Malcolm ….. Will Liverman (baritone)
Louise / Betty ….. Leah Hawkins (soprano)
Ella / Queen Mother ….. Raehann Bryce-Davis (mezzo-soprano) 
Elijah / Street ….. Victor Ryan Robertson (tenor)
Reginald  ….. Michael Sumuel (bass-baritone) 
Social ….. Tracy Cox (soprano)
Policeman 1 / Reporter 1 ….. Gregory Warren (tenor)  
Policeman 2 ….. Marco Antonio Jordão (tenor)  
Policeman 3 / Reporter 3 ….. Ross Benoliel (bass)  
Reporter 2 …. Daniel Clark Smith (tenor)
Reporter 4 ….. Tyler Simpson (tenor) 
Garvey Preacher ….. Edwin Jhamaal Davis (bass) 
Neighbour ….. Jasmine Muhammad (soprano))
Postman  ….. Elliott Paige (tenor)  
Friend ….. Adam Richardson (baritone) 
Young Malcolm ….. Bryce Christian Thompson (soprano)  
Muezzin ….. Tshombe Selby (tenor) 
An Ally ….. David Morgans Sanchez (tenor)
Episteme (jazz octet)
Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra
Kazem Abdullah (conductor)

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