Anthony Davis/ Libretto by Thulani Davis
X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X

November 18, 2023 at 1pm

Anthony Davis’s groundbreaking and influential opera, which premiered in 1986, arrives at the Met at long last. , Robert O’Hara, theater luminary and Tony-nominated director of Slave Play, oversees a potent new staging that imagines Malcolm as an everyman whose story transcends time and space.

An exceptional cast of breakout artists and young Met stars enliven the operatic retelling of the civil rights leader’s life. Baritone Will Liverman, who triumphed in the Met premiere of Fire Shut Up in My Bones, is Malcolm, alongside soprano Leah Hawkins as his mother, Louise; mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis as his sister Ella; bass-baritone Michael Sumuel as his brother Reginald; and tenor Victor Ryan Robertson as Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.


Kazem Abdullah conducts the newly revised score which provides a layered, jazz-inflected setting for, the esteemed writer, Thulani Davis’s libretto.

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THE CAST

Conductor: Kazem Abdullah

Leah Hawkins as Louise/Betty
Raehann Bryce-Davis as Ella
Victor Ryan Robertson as Elijah/ Street
Will Liverman as Malcolm
Michael Sumuel as Reginald

RUNTIME

3 Hours and 20 Minutes with 2 Intermissions