'Champion' about tragic boxer Emile Griffith blows New York’s Met away
How do you bring the music and story of a contemporary opera to life? In this edition of Musica, we go backstage at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and reveal what it takes to present the groundbreaking opera ‘Champion’.
Transcript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:06 Musica is proudly presented by Rolex.
00:10 [MUSIC]
00:12 Staging an opera is a massive challenge.
00:14 Hundreds of people are involved right up until a masterpiece is ready for the opening night.
00:19 I think what makes a great opera, obviously, is a great story.
00:23 And then you have to have a composer who knows how to use music in order to tell a story.
00:28 [MUSIC]
00:31 We created this production pretty much around the idea of a boxing ring.
00:37 I think that there's over like 400 costumes.
00:40 [MUSIC]
00:45 How do you bring the music and story of a contemporary opera to life?
00:49 We go backstage at the Metropolitan Opera in New York
00:53 to reveal what it takes to present the groundbreaking opera Champion.
00:58 [MUSIC]
01:01 Unboxing the Met's new Champion, round one.
01:06 [MUSIC]
01:17 At the heart of every gripping opera is a great story.
01:23 [MUSIC]
01:26 And this is the true and painful tale of one of the greatest boxers of all time
01:32 who came to New York in the 1950s.
01:35 [MUSIC]
01:39 Emil Griffith.
01:41 The boxer from the US Virgin Islands harbors a secret.
01:45 He's living a double life and is bisexual.
01:48 [MUSIC]
01:50 A fellow fighter, Benny Kid Perret, finds out and whispers homophobic slurs to him
01:56 before a fight in 1962.
01:59 [MUSIC]
02:01 While they're in the ring, one of the great tragedies in sports history unfolds.
02:05 Emil Griffith knocks Paré into a coma and he dies ten days later.
02:12 Emil was haunted by guilt for the rest of his life
02:15 and it's this tragic story that inspired the composer to write the opera Champion.
02:21 The line that really gets me is like, you know,
02:24 "I killed a man and the world forgave me, but yet I love the man and the world wants to kill me."
02:29 It's something that makes the whole story unfortunate in a way.
02:35 [MUSIC]
02:53 Well, at the core of this story, to me it's about two things.
02:56 It's about redemption and forgiveness, and the forgiveness part is forgiving yourself.
03:01 [MUSIC]
03:06 The six-time Grammy award-winning jazz trumpeter Terrence Blanchard wrote the masterpiece.
03:11 He's one of the great voices in contemporary American music.
03:16 He also composes the scores for the iconic filmmaker Spike Lee.
03:22 In this piece, you're going to hear a lot of different things.
03:25 We call it an opera in jazz because, you know, I'm using a lot of jazz elements.
03:32 But we have calypso, we have sambas, you know, we have even some street beats, if you want to call it that.
03:40 If I'm going to be a contemporary composer, then all of this is possible DNA for a composition.
03:46 All of it, everything in our cultures, from all around the world.
03:51 The opera shows the welterweight champion at different stages of his life through flashbacks,
03:56 and that's a challenge for the creative team.
03:59 [MUSIC]
04:02 When the stage director and set designer get together,
04:06 they need to define how the world they want to create should look.
04:10 I think the thing that I find these days with new operas and composers who want to do opera,
04:16 they're more influenced by film than they are by theater.
04:21 So it's very rare to do a new opera that doesn't have 20 scenes at least.
04:30 To bring the design to life, they'll use a model box, sort of a doll's house.
04:35 It's a small version of what the set will look like.
04:38 It'll help the designer to make important decisions about the stage and the light.
04:43 Actually, the easiest part is figuring out what it's going to look like.
04:46 With a thing like this, you've really got to start with the way it moves,
04:50 because the way a set moves can't be an encumbrance.
04:54 [MUSIC]
05:06 This isn't the type of opera where we bring down the curtain
05:09 and then take it out when the next scene happens.
05:11 It just keeps going.
05:13 So we have to work out all of those transitions very, very carefully.
05:17 [MUSIC]
05:29 The sets are built in the scene and carpentry shop.
05:33 The Metropolitan Opera has its own huge workshop
05:37 where a team of artisans does everything from carpentry to welding and painting.
05:42 For this production, the huge hand-painted show curtain is the real eye-catcher.
05:48 That's a big stage.
05:50 We work big. We're versed in working big.
05:54 You sort of need to have in mind that from a distance,
06:00 color, value, texture, sheen, temperature,
06:06 you can rank all that up a certain amount.
06:11 Bringing the characters to life visually,
06:13 that's an important task for the costume designer.
06:18 Here at the Met, over 100 artisans work on thousands of costumes and wigs each season.
06:24 Award-winning costume designer Montana Levi Blanco
06:27 started his work on Champion a year before the rehearsals began,
06:32 transitioning them to picking out the fabrics and to working with the artisans.
06:37 What you see here is, I guess some would call like our war wall.
06:41 I think that there's over like 400 costumes,
06:44 and so it's really helpful for us with these scenes with many, many people.
06:48 It's really helpful for us to see everybody as a collective.
06:54 So what's really beautiful about Champion is that it's a memory piece, right?
06:59 So we are thrown back into these very visceral, real, alive memories throughout a male's life.
07:10 So one of the first is a carnival in the Virgin Islands in the late '40s.
07:16 [music & singing]
07:33 The second is a 1950s cabaret drag bar called Hagen's Hole.
07:42 [music & singing]
07:55 And the third really interesting space is kind of this male-dominated masculine gym space.
08:03 [music & singing]
08:14 So I think that that's what's really special about Champion,
08:18 is that it's an amalgam of all these worlds that you might not normally have access to,
08:24 and Champion allows us to present that on the stage in a really beautiful and engaging way.
08:33 [music & singing]
08:53 One of the really special things about being at the Met is that they have relationships with antique jeweler vendors,
09:02 and so we're able to use vintage stuff in processes where you wouldn't normally be able to use vintage.
09:11 So right now in the process, I think that we have our basic infrastructure, right?
09:17 And then we've got to put the sprinkles and the frosting.
09:22 [music & singing]
09:28 Some roles demand great sacrifices.
09:31 Good morning. I'm Speedo. I've been training for the Met's Champion for about a year from Waspy Train.
09:38 [music]
09:40 Base baritone Ryan "Speedo" Green, who stars as the prize fighter, lost 40 kilograms to get into fighting shape.
09:48 [music]
09:55 The punchy story of the boxing champion is part of the Met's commitment to expand the repertoire and to reach new audiences.
10:05 When you're doing a modern work, a new work, there's so much that goes into even unprecedented territory of how you're going to present it.
10:12 I mean, even I think about today, we have huge dance numbers in this piece, more so than probably any opera the Met has done in a long time.
10:21 [music]
10:28 My entire career up to this point has been about breaking preconceptions.
10:32 I come from a trailer park in Virginia, and the fact that I'm singing at one of the greatest opera houses in the world, it's a big deal.
10:38 But now, I think with this opera champion, I have the opportunity to break the preconceptions of opera goers, of opera fans, of what opera can be.
10:46 [music]
11:04 This is not just an opera. I mean, there's so much involved. There's dance. I mean, there's a parade on stage, stilt walkers.
11:12 I mean, it's amazing to look at. It's amazing to listen to. And it's even more amazing to feel these kinds of stories.
11:19 I'm hoping that the audience will say, "You know what? This is beyond our wildest dreams."
11:24 [music]
11:29 I'm very proud to be able to have people experience something that will open their eyes to this art form,
11:36 which will allow them to do more investigation and have more experiences themselves.
11:41 [music]
11:43 In round two, the next episode of Musica, we closely follow the exciting rehearsal process as it builds up to the opening night.
11:51 [music]
11:56 Musica was proudly presented by Rolex.