VIDEO: Watch Footage from X: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MALCOLM X at The Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera is currently presenting the company premiere of Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Anthony Davis's groundbreaking opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, opening November 3, the second of six new productions in the 2023–24 season.

Check out a new trailer for the production below!

The influential opera, which first premiered in 1986, is newly staged by Tony-nominated director of Slave Play Robert O'Hara, who imagines Malcolm as an everyman whose story transcends space and time. With a libretto by Thulani Davis and story by Christopher Davis, the opera explores how one man's fight to define his life on his own terms becomes a battle cry for justice for an entire people.

“Malcolm X would want us to investigate and interrogate what it means for us to put his story on the Met stage,” said O'Hara. “Every part of this presentation is meant to offer an experience that challenges and disrupts the status quo, so we can see each other in our shared future, united by our humanity.”  

Conductor Kazem Abdullah conducts the newly revised score, which features a layered, jazz-inflected setting for this powerful historical drama. The cast stars Grammy Award–winning baritone Will Liverman, who triumphed in the Met premiere of Terence Blanchard's Fire Shut Up in My Bones, as Malcolm, alongside soprano Leah Hawkins as his mother, Louise, and wife, Betty; 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. 

X follows Malcolm's journey from his original identity as Malcom Little, born to Reverend Earl Little and his wife, Louise, in Lansing, Michigan, to Malcolm X after he studies and accepts the teachings of the Nation of Islam, and beyond. The opera represents X's life as one of boundless evolution, whose messages of Black self-sufficiency and self-determination were often at odds with the mainstream but continue to resonate today.

Led by O'Hara, the creative team also includes set designer Clint Ramos, costume designer Dede Ayite, lighting designer Alex Jainchill, projection designer Yee Eun Nam, wig designer Mia Neal, and choreographer Rickey Tripp—all in their Met debuts. 

Following the season premiere on November 3, seven additional performances run through December 2.

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