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.
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