“X: The Life & Times of Malcolm X” is the next production from the Met to screen at the Lakeside Little Theatre, Sunday, November 26 to Tuesday, November 28.
Music is by Anthony Davis, libretto by Thulani Davis, and story by Christopher Davis.
Anthony Davis’s groundbreaking and influential opera, which premiered in 1986, arrives at the Met at long last. Robert O’Hara, a theater luminary and the Tony-nominated director of “Slave Play,” oversees a potent new staging that imagines Malcolm as an Everyman whose story transcends time and space.
X dramatizes the life of the civil rights icon, but rather than explain its subject, the work is primarily focused on his personal transformation. It is also the journey of his audience and how they have perceived him, from victim of poverty to leader-agitator to martyr. Neither the music nor the libretto seeks to console nor superficially inspire, but always to engage and intrigue.
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