• Anthony Davis
  • X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X (1986)

  • G Schirmer Inc (World)
  • 2(II:pic,afl).1.2.1./2.1.1+btbn.0/timp.2perc/str; Improvisers' ensemble: wwI(asx,ssx,fl), wwII(tsx,bcl,ssx), wwIII(cl,cacl[=barsx]), tpt, tbn, dmkit, pf, db(elec bass)
  • SATB
  • Soprano, Soprano, Mezzo-soprano, Mezzo-soprano, Tenor, Tenor, Baritone, Bass Baritone, Bass, Boy Voice
  • 2 hr 30 min
  • Libretto by Thulani Davis, story by Christopher Davis
  • English

Programme Note

X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X sketches in a series of fast-moving vignettes the galvanic life and career of the controversial African-American activist Malcolm X (1925-1965). X features a dark, non-tonal palette, complex, shifting rhythmic patterns, and poignant lyricism; it is influenced by classical, popular, and non-Western sources. Examples of historical African-American music, including swing, scat, modal jazz, and rap, and the libretto's emulation of contemporaneous literary styles, help recreate the "sound" of Malcolm's era. Although X's score features some improvisational passages, it is constructed primarily according to traditional operatic guidelines.

Premiere
First performance: New York City Opera, Christopher Keene, conductor, 28 September 1986.
This work was developed by the American Music Theater Festival, and had its first full-length production with orchestra in Philadelphia, PA, on 9 October 1985.

Cast
LEAD ROLES
Malcolm X: Baritone
Elijah Muhammad / Street: High Tenor
Louise / Betty: Soprano

FEATURED ROLES
Reginald: Bass-baritone

SUPPORTING ROLES
Social Worker / Reporter: Soprano
Queen Mother Preacher: Mezzo-soprano
Cop / Reporter: Tenor
Garvey Preacher / Ensemble: Bass
Malcolm Little (12-14 Year-old): Child Tenor (Michael Jackson voice)

ENSEMBLE
16-24 SATB

SYNOPSIS

ACT I

Scene 1

1931, Lansing, Michigan. At the home of Reverend Earl Little and his wife, Louise, a meeting is taking place of the local chapter of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Improvement Association, and Rev. Little is late. Louise has been tense all day and members of the meeting are concerned about active white supremacist groups terrorizing local people.

Louise remembers past attacks that haunt her. A policeman arrives to say that Rev. Little was killed in a streetcar accident. The neighbors ponder what may have really happened and Louise becomes distraught, sings to herself and shortly becomes unreachable.

A social worker comes to the home sometime later and declares the Little children to be wards of the state. Malcolm tries to reach his mother who does not react to him. (She is hospitalized.) His older half-sister appears to take him to her home in Boston.

Scene 2

About 1940, Boston. Still very much a country boy, Malcolm is introduced to Ella’s middle-class black Boston, and through his discovery of the music there, finds himself in the local after-hours life, with his guide, a character named Street. But as a young adult, he gets his involved with some people who rob a wealthy home, and he is arrested.

Scene 3

In an interrogation room, Malcolm reveals the anger over the troubles that have long plagued people like him.

ACT II

Scene 1

1946-48. Malcolm broods in jail when his brother, Reginald, comes to visit. Reginald tells him about Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, whose teachings he thinks will help his brother. Malcolm begins to study the Nation’s teachings and to read many books. He becomes a serious and more hopeful man. Malcolm X is born.

1952. The jail recedes as Malcolm hears and then sees Elijah. It is as if the word removed the bars. They come face to face. Elijah embraces Malcolm like a son. He tells him he has much to learn, to spread Allah’s word, and sends him out to start temples. He is an electrifying speaker.

Scene 2

1954—63. Malcolm begins his ministry, helping to found temples in Boston, Philadelphia, Springfield, Hartford, Atlanta, and New York. This scene spans several years in telescopic fashion. The period includes some of the heights of the civil rights era and closes with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Malcolm is seen speaking on various Harlem street corners as time passes. He always takes the crowd.

Scene 3

Malcolm warms to his task when speaking before more and more exuberant crowds and decries some of the peaceful protests in the South as Malcolm defines his own political position.

Scene 4

He leads an anthem declaring “We are a nation.” At the end he is asked about Kennedy’s death and makes a remark lacking in sensitivity to the nation’s mourning. Elijah is enraged.

Scene 5

Malcolm and Betty briefly discuss his upcoming meeting with Elijah. They express the hope that their children will be free to dream without fear.

ACT III

Scene 1

1963. Malcolm is called to see Elijah, who is both disturbed that this spokesman for the Nation may have put the organization in jeopardy and that he may have become too powerful. Malcolm is disparaged by other Muslims as he comes to the meeting. The Nation is splintering into vying factions. Elijah silences Malcolm for three months and Malcolm consents to the will of his leader.

Interlude

Scene 2

He visits with his family, disheartened by the turmoil dividing his community and reporters hounding his every step. Betty hands him a ticket and tells him to go to Mecca, to spend time alone, and find his way. He decides to simply trust in Allah and ask for His help.

Malcolm is in Mecca, dressed in the simple cloths of a hajji, and awaiting word as to whether he will be permitted in as a convert and not a man born in Islam. The call to morning prayer is heard and people there begin to go through the traditional motions of prayer, which are new to him. He watches, imitates the others, and tries to learn the orthodox ritual. He has a larger vision of people across the world united together in faith, rather than by a single ideology.

Scene 3

1964-65. Just before he returns to Harlem, a riot breaks out there. He returns, now a changed man, but outwardly the same. He is greeted by reporters who question him about the rioting.

Scene 4

Later, he delivers a speech before his own newly formed group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He tells his supporters what he has learned in Africa that they are a part of a larger movement against Colonialism and Racism. He is warned of death threats. He is not concerned with the fear so evident around him.

Scene 5

He arrives to give a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. After greeting his audience, he is gunned down.

- T. Davis. May 2022

Media

Scores

Libretto
Vocal Score
Act I, full score
Act II, full score
Act III, full score

Features

  • New Opera Highlights from Wise Music Classical
    • New Opera Highlights from Wise Music Classical
    • Wise Music Classical invites you to explore new highlights from our opera catalogue. In these recent and upcoming premieres, new productions, and premiere recordings, our composers and their creative collaborators explore subjects ranging from the historical (Hadrian, X: The Life and Times of Malcom X, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) to the futuristic (Oryx and Crake), the fantastic (El Ultimo Sueño de Frida y Diego, Florencia en el Amazonas, Die Kinder des Sultans) to the thoroughly contemporary (Innocence, The Shell Trial). Threaded throughout these works are perennial themes of loss, longing, magic, art-making, and community.
  • 2024 Opera Highlights
    • 2024 Opera Highlights
    • Ahead of Opera America’s 2024 Opera Conference and the World Opera Forum, Wise Music Classical invites you to explore new highlights from our opera catalogue. Across major premieres, new productions, and first recordings, our composers and their collaborators explore both timely issues and the timeless themes of love, desire, and belonging.

Reviews

With a few further changes since Detroit, Davis has settled on a version of “X” with true staying power: its shifts from meditative pause to propulsive action confidently balanced, its unbroken flow from genre to genre as graceful as anything in opera....

Neglected for decades, this work can now be discussed with multiple casts and recordings to compare. And, with performances planned long after the run in New York, it has the opportunity to become what it always should have been: an American classic.

Joshua Barone, New York Times
5th November 2023

Interwoven with Malcolm X's own words, Thulani Davis's revised libretto is as fierce as it is compassionate, matching composer Anthony Davis's weaving of art and vernacular music into a profound whole.

Jennifer Goltz-Taylor, Opera News
August 2022

Abundant light streaming through a window high on a wall, just out of reach.

This image was one of many projections used in Friday’s performance of Anthony Davis’s opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.” The audience was also shown images of hooded riders of the Ku Klux Klan, torches being lit, corpses hanging from trees.

But it was that poetic evocation of a distant light that seemed to capture the ethos of this riveting and poignant opera. Premiered at New York City Opera in 1986 and then more or less forgotten, “X” feels all-too-relevant today — in its summoning of a painful national past, in its attention to the structural racism built deeply into our society, and in its honoring of a single extraordinary life bent on challenging the status quo. Some of the lines of the libretto by the playwright Thulani Davis (Anthony’s cousin) after a story by Christopher Davis (his brother), could have been written yesterday. “As long as I’ve been living you’ve had your foot on me,” the title character sings, “always pressing.”

Performed to a packed Strand Theatre in Dorchester, “X,” conducted by Gil Rose with rising star Davóne Tines in the title role, was a forceful, resonant way for Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Odyssey Opera to launch their new five-year cycle of operas by Black composers.

Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe
21st June 2022
The Oakland Opera Theater…scored yet another triumph over the weekend with a mesmerizing new production of Anthony Davis’ X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X....

With its mix of political fervor and emotional nuance, X encompasses within its three swift acts both the curtailed life of its protagonist and a portrait of the movement he helped to spearhead....In the 20 years since X had its world premiere at the New York City Opera....Sunday’s performance revealed a work of remarkable inventiveness and cogency that moves sure-footedly through a range of musical settings.

Davis writes in skillfully layered scenes that stride ahead or circle back on themselves as the narrative demands. Some of the music draws on traditional jazz...more often he combines a forceful rhythmic palette with beautiful, vividly etched melodic lines that soar and jab invitingly....X is...a richly rewarding theatrical experience. We can never have enough of those.

Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle
6th June 2006
[X] has brought new life to America's conservative operatic scene, being a work at once genuinely new, musically and theatrically effective, and concerned with matter that, still inflammatory [21] years after Malcolm X's assassination, is kept before us each day in New York's streets and by the news from South Africa....The work is gripping, and it is unlike any other opera....X is a work that deserves to enter the American repertory....

Not just a stirring and well-fashioned opera — that already is much — but one whose music adds a new, individual voice to those previously heard in our opera houses.

Andrew Porter, The New Yorker
One extraordinary contemporary opera...[X] is a riveting work, uncompromising politically...splendidly theatrical. The odd thing is that it was put on in these reactionary times....The overall effect is of an amalgam of epic theater, classical opera, and jazz ensemble....A spellbinding work...authentically important and original.
Edward W. Said, The Nation
A first-class piece of work and a significant addition to the American operatic repertoire.
Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post
X has the markings of a great American opera
John Rockwell, Hte New York Times
A startling debut...X [has] a strong story to tell, and a sense of urgent actuality in its undertow of black American traditions...
Paul Griffiths, The Tmes (London)
Anthony Davis' X...has drawn attention from far beyond the constituencies of either the composer or the genre. Not since Einstein on the Beach has an opera by a composer new to the form been such an event....The cumulative impact of X as remembered outweighs the relative stasis of its experience. Without acquiescing in any great measure to melodrama or entertainment value, Davis' complicated, sometimes dry and knotty, sometimes raucous and vibrant opera insists on its place as serious, new, black music.
Leighton Kerner, Leighton Kerner, Village Voice
[X is] a notable success...
Chicago Tribune
[Davis'] powerful...X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X caused a sensation at the New York City Opera.
Michael Walsh, Time Magazine
The opera X [is] a striking piece of hybrid musical theater...groundbreaking...
Nancy Malitz, Ovation

Discography

Anthony Davis: X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X

Anthony Davis: X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X
  • Label
    BMOP Sound
  • Conductor
    Gil Rose
  • Ensemble
    Boston Modern Orchestra Project / Odyssey Opera Chorus
  • Soloist
    Davóne Tines, Malcolm X; Whitney Morrison, Louise/Betty; Ronnita Miller, Ella; Victor Robertson, Street/Elijah Muhammad; Joshua Conyers, Reginald; Jonathan Harris, Young Malcolm
  • Released
    4th October 2022
Title Unavailable
  • Label
    Gramavision Records
  • Catalogue Number
    Gramavision R2-79470
  • Conductor
    William Henry Curry
  • Ensemble
    Orchestra of St. Luke’s
  • Soloist
    Eugene Perry / Thomas J. Young / Priscilla Baskerville / Hilda Harris / Herbert Perry

More Info