Terence Blanchard’s Champion, on the real life of middleweight boxing champion Emile Griffith, had its Metropolitan Opera premiere on 10 April 2023 — a season after Blanchard’s earlier opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, became the first work by a Black composer staged at the Met. This live recording, under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, won Best Opera Recording at the 2024 Grammy Awards, the Met’s fourth consecutive win in the category.
About the story
Griffith’s life became permanently shadowed by a single 1962 fight against Benny “Kid” Paret, who had taunted Griffith about his sexuality before the bout; Paret died days later from injuries sustained in the ring. Michael Cristofer’s libretto structures the opera around that event and its long aftermath rather than treating it as a single dramatic climax, using two singers to play Griffith at different points in his life — Ryan Speedo Green as the younger boxer and Eric Owens as Griffith in old age, looking back on events he never fully escaped. That structural choice lets the piece hold both the immediate drama and its decades-long consequences in view simultaneously, rather than ending where a more conventional boxing narrative might.
About the composer
Terence Blanchard is better known to most audiences as a jazz trumpeter and composer, with a parallel career scoring films — his long collaboration with director Spike Lee runs across dozens of titles. His operatic writing carries that background directly into the score, folding jazz harmony and rhythmic language into a large-scale operatic structure rather than setting it aside for a more conventionally “classical” idiom, an approach that’s become one of the more distinctive voices in recent American opera.
About the performers
The cast beyond the two Griffiths includes Latonia Moore as Emelda Griffith, Emile’s mother, Paul Groves as his trainer Howie Albert, Eric Greene as Benny “Kid” Paret, and Stephanie Blythe as Kathy Hagen — a Met roster reflecting the house’s own resident artists working under its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, rather than a cast assembled specifically around one production.
Why the Met’s recent commissioning matters
Champion arrived as part of a deliberate push by the Metropolitan Opera to commission and stage new work addressing contemporary American subjects and composers historically absent from its core repertoire — Blanchard’s two operas were the company’s first works by a Black composer in its history, staged more than a century after the Met’s 1883 founding. That programming shift extended beyond Blanchard: the same period saw the Met stage new or recent operas including Kevin Puts’s The Hours (2022) and Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, which opened the Met’s 2023–24 season, part of a broader effort to widen a repertoire long dominated by 19th- and early-20th-century European works. Champion’s Grammy win, alongside the earlier success of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, gave that commissioning strategy a concrete critical validation beyond the opera house itself.
A note on this page
This review was written fresh for mmmusic — it’s new coverage of a real, well-documented recording, not part of the site’s recovered archive from its original run as an Edinburgh CD shop between 1991 and 2018. Every fact here has been independently verified rather than assumed. No confirmed Discogs catalogue match exists for this specific release at time of writing — likely reflecting its release primarily through the Met’s own streaming and on-demand recording programme rather than physical/retail distribution — so no cover image or marketplace data is shown here.
Questions about this recording
What is Champion about?
It's based on the real life of Emile Griffith, a middleweight boxing champion whose 1962 bout against Benny "Kid" Paret — during which Paret died from injuries sustained in the fight, after taunting Griffith about his sexuality — became a defining and traumatic moment in his life.
How is Griffith's life staged across the opera?
Two singers play Griffith at different points in his life — Ryan Speedo Green as the younger boxer and Eric Owens as Griffith in old age, looking back — a structural choice that lets the opera hold both the events themselves and their long aftermath in view at once.
Is Terence Blanchard primarily known as an opera composer?
No — he's a jazz trumpeter and composer with a substantial career scoring films, particularly for Spike Lee; Champion followed his earlier opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones, which became the first opera by a Black composer staged at the Met.
Did this recording win a Grammy?
Yes — Best Opera Recording at the 2024 Grammy Awards, the Met's fourth consecutive win in the category.
