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Lyric Opera of Chicago will present the Lyric premiere of Grammy Award-winning composer Terence Blanchard and Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning librettist Michael Cristofer's knockout opera Champion, on stage January 27 to February 11, 2024. An "opera in jazz," Champion marks Music Director Enrique Mazzola's first contemporary opera at Lyric. Audiences were profoundly moved by Blanchard's Fire Shut Up in My Bones in the 2021/22 Season and, using the boxing ring as a lens, Champion explores similarly operatic issues of race, sexuality, and self-discovery.

Champion at Lyric Opera in Chicago

"I kill a man and the world forgives me. I love a man and the world wants to kill me." Champion tells the true story of Emile Griffith, a professional boxer from the U.S. Virgin Islands who threw a fatal punch in the boxing ring in 1962 after being taunted for his sexuality by his rival. Through flashback, an aging Emile reflects on his tumultuous life, from his Caribbean upbringing and conflicted sexuality to his meteoric rise in the ring and ensuing decline in health. Battling years of guilt, regret, and denial, he faces his greatest fight: coming to terms with his true self.

Grammy Award-winning composer Terence Blanchard, whose Fire Shut Up in My Bones was a smash hit in Lyric's 2021/22 Season, uses jazz as the basis for a cinematic and groundbreaking score - his first for opera - filled with bluesy harmonies and Afro-Caribbean beats. A four-piece jazz combo will be embedded into the Lyric Opera Orchestra, allowing Blanchard's jazz-infused score to shine. The libretto of Michael Cristofer, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Tony Award for Best Play for The Shadow Box, ably shifts through a number of time periods to bring the many facets of Emile - his boxing career, his sexuality, his hopes and dreams as an American immigrant - to powerful life on the opera stage.

In his third season as Lyric's Music Director, Enrique Mazzola leads the esteemed Lyric Opera Orchestra through a series of momentous firsts. Earlier this season, he conducted his first Wagner opera at Lyric with an enthusiastically received The Flying Dutchman. This production of Champion will mark his first contemporary work at Lyric. Mazzola will finish Lyric's opera season with his first-ever production of Verdi's Aida, which also marks the 100th opera of his global conducting career. In a final "first" of the 2023/24 Season, he will conduct Mozart's Requiem, his first Mozart for Lyric audiences. This diverse season allows Mazzola to showcase his broad repertoire and the Orchestra to display its mastery of a variety of musical styles.

Champion's deeply poignant central character of Emile Griffith is portrayed by three different singers. Reginald Smith, Jr., who earned great acclaim for his performance as Uncle Paul in Blanchard's Fire Shut Up in My Bones in Lyric's 2021/22 Season, stars as the older Emile Griffith. A 2015 winner of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, Smith recently enjoyed great success in the title role of Houston Grand Opera's Falstaff; later this season, he returns to Lyric as Amonasro in Aida. The rising star Justin Austin, who jumped into several performances as the central character Charles in Fire Shut Up in My Bones in Lyric's 2021/22 Season, sings the role of Young Emile. Austin is the 2023 winner of the Kennedy Center's Marian Anderson Vocal Award. Born in Germany to professional opera singer parents, he began his singing career as a boy soprano performing all over the world. Naya James, a 6th grader at Highland Elementary in Downers Grove, performs the role of Little Emile. Watch for a trio in which all three Emiles join together in a prayer for strength.