Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"...As “Blue” unwinds before you, this most American of operas also becomes a meditation on a great American schism, especially within the Black community, which you could define as the conflict between the church’s message of forgiveness, hope and reconciliation, its fervent belief that all men should be brothers, and the secular creed that insists that racism has seeped into the bones of American law enforcement and thus the fight must be entirely different."
Chicago Sun Times
- Highly Recommended
"...A five-year-old opera, “Blue,” tackles this tragedy head-on with a simple yet weighty story about a Black couple in Harlem whose 16-year-old boy dies in similar fashion. The boy is given no name. He is simply known as “The Son” — a young everyman."
Chicago Reader
- Highly Recommended
"...Thompson, drawing on his skills as playwright and director, has written a libretto that manages to be both tightly wound and poetic, and Tesori's vocal score serves his words well, even lyrically, while her orchestral writing, beginning with the opera's menacing opening rumble, gives voice to every emotional nuance."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Highly Recommended
"...As a work of art, this opera is exquisitely made. As a story, Tazewell Thompson, who both wrote the libretto and directed, has created a streamlined tale that encompasses the specificity of this family as well as the universal themes of parenting a child you lose because of a society that is malformed. There are moments of delicious entertainment, such as when the Father’s buddies celebrate the birth of his son. There is so very much love in this opera: the Mother and Father’s love for each other, for their son. The son’s love of his parents. The love of their friends. But this piece will also challenge you to feel deeply the sorrow and loss and senselessness of losing so many, because of losing this one."
Around The Town Chicago
- Highly Recommended
"...When an artist has enormous feelings about a subject, opera is a natural vessel. Blue, which debuted in 2019, has a relatively small cast and is tightly focused on a three-person family. But it contains massive anger, bafflement, and grief at the unfairness and contradictions of American policing of Black people. With a libretto by director Tazewell Thompson and music by Jeanine Tesori, Blue tells the story of an everyman Black police officer whose son is slain by one of his fellow cops. It's a very simple story, with little onstage action, but a profound tragedy."
Buzz Center Stage
- Highly Recommended
"...While Blue holds up an often times uncomfortable mirror to racism in America, it is much more than a "protest opera" or an opera about police violence. In the words of director and librettist Tazewell Thompson, an internationally acclaimed director for opera and theatre, "I wrote [Blue] from an obsessive need and responsibility to tell an intimate story behind the numbing numbers of boys and men who are killed.""
Third Coast Review
- Recommended
"...This community’s imperative kicked off opening night’s pre-opera talk, where Lyric Unlimited Scholar-in-Residence Dr. Antonio C. Cuyler, in conversation with Dr. Naomi André (the David G. Frey Distinguished Professor in Music, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), launched the chat by asking audience members to shout out a Black victim of police violence. Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Laquan McDonald, George Floyd and many more names filled the air like the bullets that took their lives."
NewCity Chicago
- Highly Recommended
"...What more effective or better art form for this to happen? Opera is full of deaths that we are moved by, that we cry for, that inspire us. "Blue" is a powerful and moving new work deeply rooted in the continuum of operatic tradition."
