Davis’s X: The Life and Legacy of Malcolm X

Malcolm X led many lives within his 39 years: as a bereaved but precocious child; as an imprisoned convict; as a firebrand spokesperson for the Nation of Islam and Black nationalism; and ultimately as one of the most pivotal figures of the Civil Rights movement. Today, he continues to inspire passion and controversy, his legacy as nuanced as the man himself.

Anthony Davis’s opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” seeks to gather Malcolm X’s many identities and hold them together in the way only an artistic work can. When the piece was premiered by New York City Opera in 1986, it broke ground not just for its unique melding of jazz and blues idioms with contemporary classical traditions, but also for the choice made by Davis and his cousin, the librettist Thulani Davis, to situate recent history on the operatic stage.

It turns out that a life as dramatic and urgent as Malcolm X’s is ripe for opera. In the aria “You Want The Story, But You Don’t Want To Know,” Anthony and Thulani Davis take the occasion of a police interrogation to let Malcolm X’s character reflect on the tragedies and injustices that have shaped his life up to that moment — and, in his refusal to deliver “easier” narratives, to presage the often tumultuous search for truth and righteousness that would direct his life in years to come. Host Rhiannon Giddens and her guests explore the drama and the passion of Malcolm X’s life and its inherent musicality upon the Metropolitan Opera’s premiere of this modern classic.

THE GUESTS

It may have taken nearly forty years for composer Anthony Davis to see the Metropolitan Opera stage “X,” but he’s kept himself busy in the interim. This prolific composer, which The New York Times described as “the dean of African-American opera composers,” is also known for “Amistad,” “Wakonda’s Dream,” and “The Central Park Five,” the latter of which won him a Pulitzer Prize in 2020. If anyone was born to be a musician, it’s Davis: People tell him that the first time he played the piano was as a baby sitting in the lap of jazz pianist Billy Taylor.   

Grammy Award-winning baritone Will Liverman was described by The Washington Post as a “voice for this historic moment.” Portraying Malcolm X in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” is only his most recent artistic triumph. Others include his breakout performance as Charles in Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up In My Bones” and the premiere of “The Factotum,” an opera he both starred in and co-created. His hope for “X” is to help “kill some of the preconceived notions about who Malcolm X was and find the humanity in him.”

Zaheer Ali is the executive director of the Hutchins Institute for Social Justice at the Lawrenceville School and something of a Malcolm X expert (a Malcolm X-pert?). He served as the project manager of the Malcolm X Project at Columbia University and his work on the Civil Rights icon has been featured in documentaries like Netflix’s “Who Killed Malcolm X?” and CNN’s “Witnessed: The Assassination of Malcolm X.” He traces his fascination with Malcolm X back to an assignment given by his eleventh-grade English teacher.