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Tazewell Thompson

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Briana Hunter

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Aaron Crouch

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Kenneth Kellogg

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Joshua Conyers

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Camron Gray

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Jonathan Pierce Rhodes

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Christian Simmons

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Ariana Wehr

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Katerina Burton

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Rehanna Thelwell

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Donald Eastman

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Jessica Jahn

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Blue

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How do you protect a child born into danger?
“Best New Opera of 2020” (The Music Critics Association of North America)
Music by Jeanine Tesori / Libretto by Tazewell Thompson
In English with Projected English Titles
New Production, Co-Produced with The Glimmerglass Festival and Lyric Opera of Chicago

In Harlem, a couple celebrates the birth of their firstborn—a boy, Black and beautiful. As the mother worries for her son’s future in today’s America, the father wrestles with his role as a police officer, a “Black man in blue.” When the unimaginable happens years later and a white officer kills the son, their deepest fears will come true.

Following its postponement in our 2020–2021 season, WNO presents the long-awaited D.C. premiere of Blue, the “Best New Opera of 2020” (The Music Critics Association of North America). Tony Award®–winning composer Jeanine Tesori and NAACP Theatre Award–winning librettist Tazewell Thompson’s new opera is inspired by contemporary events and Black literature, including Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. Jeanine’s signature genre-blending style captures the grief of a community, the bonds of a family, and the vulnerabilities of protecting a child. By giving voice to the joy and pain of families that are often unheard, Blue places timely issues at the forefront of modern opera and invites audiences to the emotional epicenter of their impact.

Blue by Tesori, From (2023/2023), Directed by Tazewell Thompson,, Conductor Jonathan Taylor Rush, Joseph Young

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