CHAMPION

Terence Blanchard’s adaption of the dramatic true story of boxer Emile Griffith

Terence Blanchard’s jazz-inflected opera CHAMPION was the first opera by the seven-time Grammy Award–winning composer and depicts the double-life of closeted boxer Emile Griffith, from his arrival in New York City from the U.S. Virgin Islands to his rise from hatmaker to world-champion prizefighter to the tragic moment that he killed his opponent in the ring—an act that haunted him for the rest of his life.

Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green portrays the Young Emile Griffith, and bass-baritone Eric Owens plays Griffith’s tormented older self. The cast also features soprano Latonia Moore as Emelda Griffith, the boxer’s estranged mother; mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as the gay-bar owner Kathy Hagen; tenor Paul Groves as Howie Albert, the factory owner who discovered Emile’s boxing talent; and baritone Eric Greene as both Benny “Kid” Paret, the fighter who taunted Griffith with homophobic slurs, ultimately leading him to unleash a barrage of blows in a 1962 title fight, and Benny Paret, Jr. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, conducts. 

Director James Robinson—whose productions of Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones and the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess at the Met scored major successes—directs CHAMPION, as he did when the work had its world premiere in St. Louis a decade ago. Camille A. Brown, who electrified audiences with her choreography in Porgy and Fire, also returns.