Terence Blanchard’s “Champion: An Opera in Jazz” comes to SFJAZZ.
Winning a Grammy Award is an occasion to celebrate for most musicians, but trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s moment of triumph also gave him a window into the loneliness of life in the closet. That flash of emotional insight proved essential to understanding the untenable situation of Emile Griffith, the world champion boxer who loved men but fatally punched an opponent in the ring after being outed by him in a prematch press event.
Rather than focusing on Griffith’s exploits as a pugilist, Blanchard’s “Champion: An Opera in Jazz” examines the tormented soul of a man muddling through the down-low world before Stonewall. Produced by SFJazz in conjunction with San Francisco’s Opera Parallèle, the West Coast premiere of “Champion” runs at the SFJazz Center from Friday, Feb. 19, to Feb. 28.
Blanchard had heard about Griffith’s story from his close friend Michael Bentt, an actor and boxer who briefly held the WBO heavyweight belt in 1993. But it wasn’t until the New Orleans trumpeter’s bittersweet Grammy win for his album “A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina)” that Griffith’s plight hit home, “when my natural reaction was to stand up and give my wife a kiss,” Blanchard recalls. “Emile Griffith became champion of the world, and he couldn’t share that moment with someone he loved. He was robbed of something so basic.”
Born in the Virgin Islands, Griffith was a top prizefighter in the 1950s and ’60s, though his career took a tragic turn in 1962 when his friend and fierce competitor Benny Paret died from injuries inflicted during their third welterweight title match in less than a year. Perhaps seeking an edge, the Cuban-born Paret had reportedly taunted Grif- fith during the weigh-in, calling him “maricón” (Spanish slang for faggot).
Suffering from dementia pugilistica in his final years, Griffith died at the age of 75 just weeks after Opera Theatre of Saint Louis premiered “Champion” on June 15, 2013, at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts. The opera features a libretto by Michael Cristofer, who earned a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize for his 1977 play “The Shadowbox,” but Griffith himself poignantly summed up the paradox of his life, telling an interviewer, “I killed a man, and the world forgave me. And I loved a man, and the world wants to kill me.”
In the first production since the premiere,
Opera Parallèle presents a revamped and fully staged version of “Champion” with video elements, intricately designed staging and new orchestrations for a 22piece orchestra, chorus and jazz quartet led by bassist Marcus Shelby. Blanchard drew on his extensive experience as a film composer, including just about every Spike Lee joint since 1991’s “Jungle Fever.”
“I’ve done a lot writing for orchestra, so that part didn’t intimidate me, but I’d never done writing for voice, or writing for a story that hasn’t been shot yet,” says Blanchard, who’s working on a second Opera Theatre of Saint Louis commission based on “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” journalist Charles Blow’s memoir. “I had to visualize it all myself, based on what the librettist wrote and what I wanted to express.”
Returning from the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis production is bass Arthur Woodley, who coincidentally grew up on St. Croix idolizing Griffith (“This is the first time I’ve done an opera where I can actually speak with my accent,” he says). The production reunites Blanchard with Nicole Paiement, Opera Parallèle’s founder, conductor and artistic director. They first worked together at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1999 and teamed up again last year during Blanchard’s first season as an SFJazz Center resident artistic director to present his sweeping elegy “A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina).”
Seeking to expand audiences and creative possibilities for opera, Paiement felt that “Champion” was a perfect fit for Parallèle. “Jazz is definitely an element,” she says. “It’s in his bones. The great thing about Terence’s music is this incredible humanity and beautiful melodies. And you can’t dismiss the words of Michael Cristofer, which capture this balance Emile was trying to find in his life. When Arthur Woodley, as old Emile, speaks to young Emile, saying, ‘What do you need, boy?’ it really just gets you.”