Last Updated on August 27, 2025
Blue is the Colour
“Is it an opera?” asked the venerable reviewer sitting to my left. Well, most emphatically yes. Composer Jeanine Tesori who has several Tony awards to her name and librettist Tazewell Thompson’s Blue, which opened last night at the ENO, is definitely an opera and why the question? Probably because Tesori’s CV is musical theatre based with credits including Caroline, or Change; Shrek The Musical; Thoroughly Modern Millie; and Violet. Tazewell Thompson is best known as a director of opera and musicals, with a day job as Director of Opera Studies at Manhattan School of Music.
Blue is a through-composed piece of music theatre first performed at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2019. It has been staged since then by a number of American companies receiving its European premiere at the Dutch National Opera in 2022. With a narrative arc built out of the tragedy of circumstance, the heart of the story lies in the institutional racism and violence that condemns so many young black men to be murdered by the police in the USA. It’s an old tale on repeat with rotten roots embedded deep in the legacy of slavery.
A young Harlem black couple has a baby boy. The father is a policeman who tries to protect his idealistic son from the endless dangers that surround him but fails. The consequences of the very act of bringing a male child into the world unleashes the tragedy and there is no escaping its tentacles. Thompson’s libretto weaves a sophisticated web for the music to sit upon, effortlessly combining the vernacular and humour of the street with the stoic language of the spiritual. As the African- American child of a jazz musician, he was taken into the care of Catholic nuns as a child and brings an emotional authenticity and nuanced cultural understanding to the work combined with the dramatic craft skills of his day job. If the characters are presented as archetypes – The Mother, The Father, The Son, The Reverend – they nonetheless bubble with individuality, passion and humour.
Tesori’s score isn’t easy to pigeonhole and skitters between the tonal and atonal with the former being used to represent spirituality, the domestic and happiness. She is promiscuous in her stylistic borrowings bringing together elements from the blues, contemporary musical theatre, Bernstein, spirituals, Wagner, African music and George Gershwinesque jazz. It’s a heady but coherent mix that is always at the service of the drama, never becoming self-indulgent.
The opera is in two acts with a flashback epilogue and the start to Act 1 that effectively functions as a prologue. It opens with low percussive rumbles and ominous string glissandi as we see a male figure in a hoodie and denim jacket changing into his ‘blues’ – an NYC policeman’s uniform. This sets the scene effectively for the upcoming inter-generational father/son conflict as well as articulating the inner struggle that black American policemen have to manage.
We then jump cut to the female world. Former ENO Harewood Artist Nadine Benjamin who initially trained as a banker and recently won plaudits for her 2022 Mimi in the ENO’s La bohème, plays The Mother, telling her three Girlfriends about her new husband and sharing news about her pregnancy. Benjamin is commanding in this role, powerful and passionate and with an impeccably consistent vocal tone across all registers. From the lush romanticism of ‘I Love Him’ with its echoes of ‘I Loves You Porgy’ to the more soulful ‘Keep on Keepin’ On’ or after the emotional catharsis of the funeral in the epilogue’s complex centrepiece, a kalimba-driven paean in 13 to the joys of soul food, she is the complete matriarch. A woman whose identity is completed by motherhood – confiding to her husband ‘I know who I am now’.
The dynamic trio of Girlfriends, and yes they are the Valkyries in disguise, play the role of critical but supportive friends. The Mother wants their ‘love and support’ but they are shocked by her partnering with a ‘cop’ as well as displaying a prurient interest in The Father’s ‘shoe’ size. They are also concerned about the male gender of the baby, but it takes a village to raise a child and they are up for the job.
American soprano Chanáe Curtis as Girlfriend 1 comes into her own doubling as the Nurse with an explosive comic coloratura outburst as she brings the new parents their child. British soprano and ENO Chorus member Sarah-Jane Lewis as Girlfriend 2 impresses with her gorgeous vocal tone and German mezzo and current ENO Harewood Artist Idunnu Münch as Girlfriend 3 has an intense timbral focus to her voice that makes it very characterful. Whether they are in full Valkyrie mode lifting the roof of the Coliseum, engaging in atonal chanting or singing the spiritual influenced ‘Ain’t Nobody Comin’ Home’, the trio added dramatic, musical and comic value to the production.
American bass/baritone Kenneth Kellogg has played The Father at six opera houses and originated the role. He is probably tired of being described as imposing, but at 6’5” he is. However, Kellogg is unafraid to bring his sensitive side to the party along with the more traditional male characteristics. The scenes in which he bonds with his baby son – ‘I got my own baby to call baby’, ‘High as a kite, head in the clouds’ – are genuinely moving. His deep, resonant voice has an edge that allows him to infuse the emotional scenes with a soulful lilt.
The Father also has his own posse, his police colleagues. British tenor and ENO Chorus member John-Colyn Gyeantey as Policeman 1, South African tenor Rheinaldt Tshepo Moagi as Policeman 2 and American baritone Joshua Conyers as Policeman 3 bring a comic sense of solidarity and a shambling appeal to the drama. They complain about their new uniform, and they wait until half-time at an American Football match to offer congratulations to the new father and celebrate their relative material security, ‘You got insurance, dental, you’re covered for life!’
South African tenor and current ENO Harewood Artist Zwakele Tshabalala is the breakout star of this production bringing a restless hip-hop energy to the role of The Son. He feels entrapped by his father and by his circumstances – ’No, I will never let you go’ – ‘Son’ you a black boy, a walking moving target’ – calling his ‘cop’ father a ‘White man’s dog’, asking him ‘What am I supposed to?’ to which his father responds ‘Stay alive’. His voice has terrific power and clarity and it will be exciting to see him move into some of the great dramatic leading roles.
Trinidad and Tobago-born British tenor Ronald Samm gives a moving performance as The Reverend. The character is central to the 2nd act, trying to hold the anger of The Father in a tense encounter ‘I am America’s nigger on the street’, and the grief of the wider community, Drawing together a parallel between God’s sacrifice of his own son and the death of The Son. Only opera has the space and sophistication of musical language to explore the dark crevices of this type of tragedy.
Tinuke Craig’s tight direction brings out the emotional journeys of the characters effectively as they pivot between hope and anguish. Alex Lowde’s set is fantastic, a rectangular spinning box is set within a larger circle, both framed by neon and contextualised by Ravi Deepres’ impressionistic videos of Harlem life. It references the way we see the world through TV and smartphones giving us a series of snapshots into the world of the characters.
The ENO orchestra are on a roll after the wide-screen triumph of Korngold’s The Dead City, and with Matthew Kofi Waldren conducting the dramatic line was never sacrificed. The climaxes were intense and tempi suited to the conversational metres of the libretto.
If opera companies want to be seen to celebrate diversity, then they have to make more than token gestures. The Metropolitan Opera in New York has had two recent hits with jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones which opened the 2021–22 season, and more recently with Champion, which tells the story of Emile Griffith, a young boxer. And now the ENO on the back of their strongest season in years, have got in on the act with Blue. Composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist Tazewell Thompson are opening up the temples of high art culture to previously unheard voices and stories. As my neighbour commented at the end, ‘It’s not the usual opera audience’, and surely that’s a good thing?
English National Opera,
London Coliseum,
St Martin’s Lane,
London WC2N 4ES
From 20 April – 4 May 2023
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