Whitefish Theatre Company and the Whitefish Performing Arts Center are co-presenting the eighth live on-screen performance of the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD 2022-2023 season. Grammy-winning composer Terence Blanchard’s jazz-inflected opera “Champion”, a MET premier, will be shown on Saturday, April 29 at 10:55 a.m. at the O’Shaughnessy Center in Whitefish. Approximate run time is 3 hours, including one 30-minute intermission. Tickets are sold only at the door which will open at 10:30 a.m. Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students, paid by cash or check only. Please call 406-862-5371 to inquire about 10 student scholarships. Also note that “Champion” contains adult themes, some explicit language, and physical violence.

Sung in English with subtitles, Blanchard seamlessly fuses opera and jazz styles to create this unique work based on the true story of closeted welterweight boxing champion Emile Griffith. In Act 1, on the island of St. Thomas in the 1950s, Emile is a young man who dreams of reuniting with his mother, Emelda, and becoming a hat maker, singer, and baseball player. He moves to New York City and finds her, and though she doesn’t recognize him at first, she is overjoyed to reunite with one of the children she left behind. She brings him to meet Howie Albert, a hat manufacturer, hoping to find Emile work. Howie sizes up Emile and immediately recognizes his potential as a boxer. He offers to train him as a welterweight, and Emile quickly develops his natural talent and physique, as Emelda urges him to give up his other dreams. But Emile is lonely and struggles with his identity. He goes to a gay bar in Times Square and meets Kathy, the owner, who welcomes him into a world that both excites and frightens him. Emile opens up to Kathy about his childhood and the cruelty he experienced from a fundamentalist relative. As time progresses to 1962, Emile is set to fight Benny “Kid” Paret in a high-profile match. When they face off at weigh-in, Paret taunts Emile, calling him “maricon,” a Spanish slur for homosexuals. Alone with Howie, Emile tries to talk to him frankly about why this word hurt him so deeply, but Howie refuses to have the conversation, telling him that this is not something to be talked about in the boxing world. Alone, Emile wrestles with his sense of manhood and self. As the fight begins and quickly escalates, Paret continues to mock him. Emile delivers seventeen blows in seven seconds, causing Paret to collapse, fall into a coma, and later die.

In Act 2, as the 1960s continue, Emile amasses more wins, more fame, and more notoriety, but internally, he is haunted by memories of Paret. Although Emile is still grappling with his identity, he meets and marries a woman named Sadie, against the advice of Howie and Emelda. In the 1970s, however, his luck changes. He is on a losing streak and starting to show signs of “boxer’s brain”, or trauma-related dementia. Emile rejects the support of his family and Howie and instead looks for comfort back at Kathy’s bar. Outside in the streets, he is taunted by a group of thugs who brutally beat him, exacerbating his brain injuries. As time moves to the present on Long Island, Emile relives the nightmare of the attack as Luis, his adopted son and caretaker, tries to remind him that all of that was in the past. They go to meet Kid Paret’s son, Benny Paret, Jr., so that Emile can ask for forgiveness. Luis tells Benny that since that terrible evening in the ring, Emile has struggled to find peace with what he has done. Back at home, the memories subside and Emile Griffith, the former welterweight champion, can now take life one day at a time.

Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green stars as the prizefighter who rises from obscurity to become a world champion. Bass-baritone Eric Owens stars as Griffith’s older self, haunted by the ghosts of his past. Soprano Latonia Moore is Emelda Griffith, the boxer’s estranged mother, alongside mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as bar owner Kathy Hagen. Director James Robinson—whose productions of “Fire” and “Porgy and Bess” brought down the house—oversees the staging, while Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads this stellar cast. Lawrence Brownlee hosts the presentation with exclusive behind-the-scenes access during the intermissions.

Food and beverage will be available for purchase during the performance. This opera is the eighth of ten Metropolitan Opera Live in HD performances offered from November 2022 to June 2023. Four operas are being shown at the O’Shaughnessy Center and six operas are being shown at the Whitefish Performing Arts Center. Please go to www.whitefishtheatreco.org to read about the entire Met Opera Live in HD season or call 406-862-5371 for more information.