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“I’d long believed opera had the potential to change people. Its ability to tell stories about the human condition through text and music is why I’ve dedicated my life to the craft,” he says. “One thing became apparent to me though: the stories that I’d given my life to tell weren’t my stories; they weren’t the stories of people who looked like me. As we grappled with the reality of Black bodies being taken, the worlds and stories I’d step into on stage became hollow. Opera wasn’t telling a story about this human condition.

“And then, Blue came into my life. For the first time in my career, opera met the urgency of the moment. For the first time, I stepped on stage to tell a story about my family, my love, my joy, my hopes and wishes, my pain, and my grief. I didn’t have to guess. I knew this story in my soul. A Black story. Opera was no longer about the other. Blue was about us.

“As I’ve performed this opera throughout the country, I’ve become witness to that believed potential. I’ve seen Blue change people. Hearts have opened. Awareness and dialogue spill from the minds and mouths of those who have been witness. Nina Simone said, ‘It’s an artist’s duty to reflect the time in which we live.’ Blue embodies this sentiment and I do believe we all will be better for it.

In 2015, Francesca Zambello kicked off the conversation that was to become Blue by contacting the Tony Award^®–winning composer Jeanine Tesori. “I was interested in commissioning an opera that spoke very directly to issues we are facing today,” says Zambello. “I was particularly interested in opening a conversation about America’s ongoing struggle with race. Jeanine is a composer with theatrical sensibility, a keen awareness of the issues shaping our experiences in 21st-century America, and a burning desire to tell stories that change hearts and minds.”

Tazewell Thompson, a long-time part of the artistic families of both the Glimmerglass and WNO, was brought on as librettist and director for the project. He has spent his life in theater and opera, as actor, dramaturg, trustee, director, and playwright. “With Blue, I return to not what I know, but to what I feel,” Thompson says. “What I feel for my people, my culture, our survival mechanisms, sense of community; our struggles, setbacks, and accomplishments. What I feel is a necessary yarn to spin at this critical moment in our country where all lives matter, in general; where Black lives matter, in particular.”

The story of Blue was born, revised, and born again out of months of conversation between Thompson and Tesori, with Zambello frequently joining in. As the story began to take shape, more conversations were required. In the libretto’s early draft, The Father was a jazz musician, but was that a cliché? It was Tesori's suggestion that The Father who loses his Son to a police officer’s bullet be an officer of the law. “Absolutely not,” was Thompson's immediate response. “I don’t want to, nor do I have the desire, interest, or skills to write about a Black police officer.” After further consideration, though, he “recognized the irony, the tension, the glittering possibilities of personal conflict and heartache of a father whose son is murdered by a fellow officer.”

More conversations: Thompson interviewed two Black police officers, one in Washington, D.C., and one in Harlem. The latter shared that he had a difficult relationship with his son, who was embarrassed and appalled that this dad worked for and with “the man”—the enemy. In the same conversation, Thompson learned that insurance coverage for the policeman’s entire family—including dental—was a major motivator to join the force. Both of these details were significant as he proceeded with the libretto, as were both officers’ repeated references to their uniforms as “blues.”

Although Blue deals with difficult subject matter, both Thompson and Tesori wanted their opera to be rooted in a stable family, with strong community ties. “I don’t think any culture should be represented merely by its suffering,” Tesori says. “Our characters are innocent, in a way, of what is about to happen to them.” While The Father and The Mother are aware that even their educated, upper-middle class family exists within a racist societal structure, there is reason for them—and the audience—to hope, to dream, to laugh.

Even as Thompson and Tesori labored over their opera, more stories of unarmed Black men and women killed by police were in the news, each incident leaving communities more raw, more wounded. Composer and librettist made a decision early on not to ask the audience to witness the tragic event that changes everything for the characters. Blue is undeniably the story of a terrible rupture, but it is also a story of relationships. The opera unfolds in a series of conversations—between an expectant mother and her girlfriends, a husband and wife who have just become father and mother, among a fraternity of policemen and fathers, a father and son, a grieving man and his pastor, a community devastated by yet another senseless loss.

In telling a story like this one, the conversations can be difficult, but they are essential. “When people say anybody can tell any story, it’s factually true but morally complicated,” says Tesori. “It’s not always a comfortable feeling for me. I think of myself as a facilitator, there to illuminate the story of my collaborator. When it comes to structuring the score, I’m on familiar ground. But the source is Thompson, and when I have a question about story, I call him. As human beings we have so much in common, but with something so charged as racial inequality, a system that has been put in place over hundreds of years, I know I can’t even begin to understand what it’s like.”

For Thompson, the act of storytelling, of entering into a conversation shared among artists and audience, says “something deeper, something about our profound irreconcilable, (incontestable) communality—we are all singers in the same choir, leaves off the same tree—however the fates divide us: black, brown, yellow, white; Jew, Gentile, Muslim; gay, lesbian, transgender; Republican, Democrat; rich, poor.”

Blue had its world premiere at Glimmerglass in 2019, and faculty members from Colgate University’s departments of education and sociology were on hand to moderate pre- and post-show conversations. The work resonated strongly with audience members and critics alike. Financial Times gave Blue “pride of place” in a season round-up, noting that “Tesori’s music is eclectic, like so many new operas, but assuredly so. Her orchestration is rich and her vocal lines retain a beauty and eloquence.” New York Times then chief classical music critic Anthony Tommasini included Blue as one of his top picks of 2019, citing “Ms. Tesori’s strong yet subtle score ... combined with Mr. Thompson’s grimly elegant and snappy words—one of the best librettos I’ve heard in a long while.”

Blue demonstrates the power of a single phone call to grow into shared conversations across the country. “I believe this is exactly the kind of work Washington National Opera must be involved with,” says Zambello. “Without denying the continuing relevance of older masterworks, like Don Giovanni and Samson and Delilah, I feel strongly that we cannot fulfill our mission, or the mission of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, without bringing you the works of today’s great artists, sparking conversations around the world we inhabit together in the 21st century.”

—Kelley Rourke is the Artistic Advisor of the Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative

He wrote: “When I joined the Glimmerglass project in 2015, the opera was referred to in shorthand as Race Opera. I began to attach new titles to each draft: No Name Necessary, Say My Name, The Hunted, Targets, Black Boy. …

As the opera begins, the audience sees the central character, The Father, changing from his civilian clothes into his police blues. I kept cycling through titles: Black Blue, Black In Blue, Black Is Blue. But it seemed better to be more ambiguous, to refer equally to a mood, a uniform, a kind of day, a kind of music. I wrote to Jeanine and we decided we should call it Blue. …

Blue has been referred to as a “protest opera” and “the opera about police violence.” I suppose both are true. But I did not set out with that goal. I wrote it from an obsessive need and sense of responsibility to tell an intimate story behind the numbing numbers of boys and men who are killed.

But here we are now: art imitating life, life imitating art. Unfortunately, the themes in Blue have no expiration date. I add my voice to those of the characters singing in the opera, and to those of the real families suffering great losses. Our eyes will never be free of tears.”

In the first scene where we meet The Mother telling her three Girlfriends about her recent marriage and pregnancy, we witness an event that feels so normal and natural. Here we have an every-woman, called “The Mother” in the libretto, sharing joyous everyday details of young adulthood: getting married and starting a family. Yet this is an extraordinary occurrence—indeed, this is the magic. This is what had been missing in mainstream opera, a space that had not previously included stories of Black characters who are fully human and relatable to all audiences.

Blue showcases Black experiences on the opera stage in a way that brought a shadow culture of Black operas, operas that have previously been hidden from the majority, into the foreground. Such shadow culture Black creative expressions include operas written from the late-19th century up into the 21st century that reveal a deep engagement and care in representation that is not present in the dominant culture and bring Black perspectives and experiences to the forefront in how the narrative unfolds. This shadow culture includes Black singers who sang operatic arias, primarily in recitals (including Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, Thomas Bowers, and Sissieretta Jones in the 19th century); Black opera companies (such as those run by Theodore Drury and Mary Cardwell Dawson); and the works of Black composers (including Harry Lawrence Freeman, Scott Joplin, William Grant Still, Anthony Davis, and many more).

Blue belongs to two intersecting trios. The first trio marks the momentous summer of 2019, when three Black operas began to make history. Composer Anthony Davis and librettist Richard Wesley’s The Central Park Five premiered at Long Beach Opera in June 2019 and went on to be the first opera by a Black composer to win the Pulitzer Prize in music. Fire Shut Up in My Bones, with music by Terence Blanchard and libretto by Kasi Lemmons, premiered at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in June 2019. Originally commissioned by WNO’s own Timothy O’Leary, who previously served as general director of Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Fire Shut Up in My Bones has gone on to be the first opera by a Black composer presented at the Metropolitan Opera in its history (that goes back to 1883). Such a move, 68 years after Marian Anderson’s historical debut at the Met, will hopefully act as a similar beacon to other opera houses to perform and commission operas by Black composers. This brings us to Blue, which premiered at the Glimmerglass Festival in July 2019, won the Music Critics Association of North America 2020 Award for Best New Opera, and is the first of this trio to have a commercial recording available.

The second trio of which Blue is a member, is that it is the composer’s—Jeanine Tesori’s—third opera. Tesori’s first two operas were also commissioned by forward-looking opera director Francesca Zambello, former general and artistic director of the Glimmerglass Festival and Artistic Director of Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center. Tesori is currently working on a fourth opera, Grounded (collaborating with playwright, now librettist, George Brant), commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, with performances scheduled at both The Met and Washington National Opera. Tesori’s first opera, A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck, with libretto by Tony Kushner, premiered at Glimmerglass (2011), and concerns a volatile scene from 1951 in the life of playwright Eugene O’Neill and his wife Carlotta. The Lion, the Unicorn, and Me, Tesori’s second opera, was based on a children’s book by Jeanette Winterson, adapted into a libretto by poet J.D. McClatchy. This holiday opera premiered at the Washington National Opera in 2013.

Blue brought Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson together. Commissioned for the Glimmerglass Festival, an early impetus for the opera’s story was Francesca Zambello’s question, “Why is the killing of innocent Black men happening all the time, and how can we use art to speak and ask the question?”

Writing his first libretto, Thompson carried years of experience from spoken theater as an award-winning playwright and director, along with his deep knowledge as an opera director. Tesori speaks of her role as a white woman collaborating with a Black man in this work about police violence in today’s political climate, “For me, Tazewell has the underlying rights to this story because it is so connected to his experience in the world...That to me is what reparations look like. It is to acknowledge that that story does not belong to me. I participate, but Tazewell has the underlying rights. That acknowledgment is really important.” She moves thoughtfully in these spaces, joins this conversation with energy and “with a lot of humility.” She admits sometimes “I feel scared, I feel uncomfortable, but I don’t feel like exiting. And that staying in, to me, is the invitation to be in specific dialogue.” She continues, “I know that it is my responsibility to go deep or don’t go. So, if I’m going to be writing in a community, I better know as much as I can possibly know, without truly knowing with a big ‘K.’ Otherwise, I should stay out.”

The musical language and style of Blue reflect the contemporaneousness of today’s current issues. The dramatic pacing expands and unfolds in a way that comes alive and is enriched by bouncing off the vast architectural acoustics of the opera house yet also has the immediacy of sitting right next to the speaker and the direct impact of watching the conversation up close. Narrative and musical themes recur not just as quick references, but as embedded tropes that weave sections of the opera together.

Historically and musically, Blue compassionately tells a story that is at once painful and identifiable to so many of us. Through the collaboration of an interracial compositional team, this opera offers a microcosm for listening to, and learning across, diverse vantage points and lived narratives. While Blue is not the only opera about Black experiences, it is part of a new era of Black operas in the United States that extends back to the 19th century up to the present. The luster of this current golden age of Black operas is not due to the paucity of operas written before, but to the fact that new operas are joining earlier works that are finally emerging from the shadows and challenging the elitist reputation of opera as a genre. The presentation of Black lives in ways that reveal a three-dimensional humanity is appearing in an unlikely, yet increasingly emblematic place: opera. And the opera house is becoming an eloquent stage for a trenchant social justice.

—Naomi André, excerpted from liner notes for the WNO recording of Blue on the Pentatone label, released in 2022

Blue is a response to tragic events whose causes are many and complex. The books listed below offer varied perspectives on history, policy, and opportunities for progress.

Between the World and Me (by Ta-Nehisi Coates) pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, offering a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crises.

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race (edited by Jesmyn Ward) gathers some of today’s most original thinkers and writers in response to James Baldwin’s 1962 classic, The Fire Next Time. The collection is divided into three parts that shine a light on the darkest corners of our history, wrestle with our current predicament, and envision a better future.

Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (by Jonathan Kozal) reports on the author’s two-year tour of U.S. public schools, which revealed an extreme divide in the quality of resources, facilities, and staffing between the country’s richest and poorest schools, challenging the notion that our country provides all children with equal opportunities.

White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (by Tim Wise) is a personal examination of the way racial privilege shapes the daily lives of white Americans in every realm: employment, education, housing, criminal justice, and beyond.

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America (by Michael Eric Dyson) argues that to make real racial progress we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how Black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.

The New Jim Crow (by Michelle Alexander) is an account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans being locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status—denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement.

Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice (by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard) follows two families—one white, one Black—as they discuss a police shooting of a Black man in their community. The story aims to answer children’s questions about such traumatic events and to help children identify and counter racial injustice in their own lives.