Champion
Terence Blanchard’s opera CHAMPION about legendary gay boxer Emile Griffith heads for The Met in NY
Terence Blanchard’s six-time Grammy Award–winning composer’s operatic retelling of the dramatic story of gay boxer Emile Griffith arrives in New York. Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green stars as the closeted young hatmaker-turned-prizefighter, who rises from obscurity to become world champion and, in one of the great tragedies in sports history, kills his homophobic archrival in…
Terence Blanchard’s ‘Champion: An Opera in Jazz’ the story of a queer man in a macho world
Terence Blanchard’s Champion: An Opera in Jazz (2013) tells the real-life story of world champion boxer Emile Griffith, a man haunted by memories of his past who struggled to reconcile his sexuality in a hyper-macho world. This groundbreaking work combining the disciplines of opera and jazz, was co-commissioned by the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in…
