How Fire Shut Up in My Bones Made a Black Queer Opera Fan Feel Seen
West Side Story, the Met is a staggering temple of old white privilege with curving double staircases and crystal chandeliers that ascend to the ceiling.
Yet as much as I love the Met, I’ve never seen myself reflected or represented there. Black artists such as Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman have triumphed at the Met, and there are a few popular operas featuring people of color, but most opera singers are non-POC and the most popular operas are written by white men.
The few operas written by POC are performed in small, regional houses — never at the Met.When the Met announced that it would open the 2021 season with Fire Shut Up in My Bones, a new opera created by people of color, I was skeptical.
The original Met was built so that the Vanderbilts, Morgans, and Rockefellers could have private opera boxes. The current Met was built under the guise of urban renewal, i.e., shoving out the less privileged Black and brown people who lived there.
