NEW YORK, NY.- “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” which arrives at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, was a family affair. The meditative yet dramatic work has a score by Anthony Davis to a scenario by his younger brother, Christopher Davis, and a libretto by their cousin Thulani Davis.
When they were working on the opera, in the early 1980s, the three were living in New York. Christopher appeared as Malcolm X in a play in Jamaica, Queens, and Anthony was playing experimental, improvised music in ensembles alongside Thulani’s poetry in productions downtown.
“There was a lot of energy in the air,” Christopher, 70, said in a recent interview at the Met alongside Anthony, 72 — with Thulani, 74, joining by video from her home in Madison, Wisconsin.
In the decades since “X” had a celebrated New York City Opera premiere in 1986, Anthony and Thulani collaborated on another opera, “Amistad,” and Anthony wrote “The Central Park Five,” which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2020. But “X” wasn’t revived until last year, in Robert O’Hara’s Afrofuturist staging at Detroit Opera, the production that will appear at the Met in expanded form.
In the interview, the Davises discussed the opera’s creation; their experience with Malcolm’s widow, Betty Shabazz; and revising the piece. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
ANTHONY DAVIS: When we moved to New York, Thulani and I were part of this scene of music and poetry, what were called choreopoems; Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls” was the most famous. And Thulani and I worked with Ntozake and Jessica Hagedorn on “Where the Mississippi Meets the Amazon.” We ran at the Public Theater for several months.
THULANI DAVIS: The band improvised, and we did our words. It was different every night. That was eye-opening for me. That’s how I realized Anthony and I had similar sensibilities: Whatever emotion I was coming from, he was playing it.
CHRISTOPHER DAVIS: I had talked to Anthony about doing a music piece about Malcolm X from when I was in college. I’d taken a course in African American autobiography, and I remember calling Tony and saying I’d just read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” and there’s so much music in the book. The spiritual development of Malcolm paralleled the spiritual development — in a different religion — of John Coltrane.
ANTHONY: I had done some concerts at the Kitchen, and Mary MacArthur, who was running it, said they were looking for new composers to write operas. She asked me if I had any ideas, and I said sure, I’d like to write an opera about Malcolm X. So we put together a grant application. Eric Bogosian wrote it; he was working there at the time.
THULANI: I had never written 50 pages of poetry, much less in one concerted period of time. I started at the beginning. This is the easiest and best part of how we work: I write something, I send it to Anthony, he calls me up and plays it on the piano, I swoon, and we move on. We still do that.
My biggest challenge was that Malcolm spoke in run-on sentences. I made them much more rhythmic, with short sentences so Anthony could set them. That was the liberty I took. And repetitions — more of a hammer sound.
CHRISTOPHER: There was an original treatment by Thulani that came to me, and I reworked it, and did a scene-by-scene breakdown. I imagined it as being in three acts, and I labeled each act: Hate, Fear, Love.
The first act for me was one sentence: “And you wonder why we hate you.” Act 2 is the first reclamation of Malcolm, through the Nation of Islam, and it was important for people to see the power of that message for someone like him. It was very personal to me, as a younger brother, to have Malcolm’s little brother Reginald coming into his prison cell and telling him, “You have to straighten up.” The third act is all about the second conversion. I thought of it as a classic tragedy, where there’s a false unity that’s destroyed and you come back to the real unity, the real salvation that comes from the pilgrimage to Mecca. And then he can die.
Betty Shabazz said that we made the Nation of Islam look too good. And I said, “If the Nation isn’t compelling, your husband’s a fool.” Kind of a tough thing to say to the widow.
THULANI: I met her when I was writing. I was at the point when Malcolm was about to go to Mecca, and I was trying to write her aria. I sat with her, and she had my intestines for lunch. Her first words were, “Who do you think you are?” It was a terrifying experience. The thing that was hard about it was that she said Malcolm never had any doubt ever in his life.
ANTHONY: She was very protective, and I understand why she acted that way about his legacy. But we were trying to create a drama, and make him human and vulnerable, so that people identify with him.
CHRISTOPHER: Before the opening at City Opera, there was a meeting that was arranged for us and Betty by Bill Lynch, who was David Dinkins’ chief of staff when he was Manhattan borough president. And Dinkins said it was really important that the whole community be behind the piece.
THULANI: I changed her aria for City Opera, because the family was going to be there, and it seemed brutal. In the original, she feels the henchmen coming, that they’re coming for Malcolm. And I thought, because words like “blood” are in it, that it would be rough for anyone who knew him to sit through. So I wrote a nicer one. At the opening night party, Betty said, “All’s well that ends well.”
ANTHONY: It was the beginning of a new direction in my music, knowing that opera was something I wanted to continue.
There were several occasions where there might have been a revival of “X.” Los Angeles was interested. I talked to Julie Taymor at one point. But it never came to fruition. Then, during the pandemic, a lot of my commissions were canceled.
When I did “X,” I wrote everything by hand. I thought it would be good to have it in the computer, so I could have flexibility: If I were doing it with an orchestra of 10, say, I could easily do the reduction. It would be useful.
So I input the largest version I could think of, of what the piece could be — excerpts, so it could be done in concert. I had almost finished with the excerpts, which was like half the opera, and Yuval Sharon called me. He was going to be taking over at Detroit Opera, and said one of the first things he wanted to do was “X.” And I said, “Well, funny you should say that.”
I started reworking the orchestration, and looking at places I thought could be more concise. For me, it was a revitalizing thing, coming back to where I started in opera, and realizing why I’d gotten so excited. I could refine it while keeping true to the original spirit.
THULANI: Getting into your 70s is helpful as well; you know less is more. We both have become more economical. It wasn’t painful to trim stuff.
CHRISTOPHER: And Thulani added a scene with Malcolm and Betty.
ANTHONY: I had seen the movie “One Night in Miami,” which is about a kind of mythological meeting of Sam Cooke, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X. And there’s a little scene where Malcolm is on the phone with Betty, and he’s saying he’s going to meet with Elijah Muhammad. I said, whoa, we don’t have that; that’s kind of interesting, having this intimate scene before he goes.
THULANI: Anthony also asked me to put back the original aria for Betty.
ANTHONY: It’s a different moment than in the ’80s. Classical music has been trying to address the decades-long exclusion of people of color, and opening up not just to different people but also to a different aesthetic.
CHRISTOPHER: At the dress rehearsal in Detroit, they brought all these schoolkids, and their response to the first act — it was like somebody was saying what they felt, and it’s in this opera house! At the end of Malcolm’s aria, they were like, yes. And unfortunately, considering the way things are going, there will always be that reaction.
ANTHONY: In that aria, Malcolm sings, “You have your foot on me, always pressing.” It’s George Floyd. A lot of the same things are happening that were happening.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
