‘Champion: An Opera in Jazz’ conveys gay boxer’s torment

Winning a Grammy Award is an occasion to celebrate for most musicians, but trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s moment of triumph also gave him a window into the loneliness of life in the closet.

Blanchard had heard about Griffith’s story from his close friend Michael Bentt, an actor and boxer who briefly held the WBO heavyweight belt in 1993.

[...] it wasn’t until the New Orleans trumpeter’s bittersweet Grammy win for his album “A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina)” that Griffith’s plight hit home, “when my natural reaction was to stand up and give my wife a kiss,” Blanchard recalls.

Born in the Virgin Islands, Griffith was a top prizefighter in the 1950s and ’60s, though his career took a tragic turn in 1962 when his friend and fierce competitor Benny Paret died from injuries inflicted during their third welterweight title match in less than a year.

Suffering from dementia pugilistica in his final years, Griffith died at the age of 75 just weeks after Opera Theatre of Saint Louis premiered “Champion” on June 15, 2013, at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts.

The opera features a libretto by Michael Cristofer, who earned a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize for his 1977 play “The Shadowbox,” but Griffith himself poignantly summed up the paradox of his life, telling an interviewer, I killed a man, and the world forgave me.

In the first production since the premiere, Opera Parallèle presents a revamped and fully staged version of “Champion” with video elements, intricately designed staging and new orchestrations for a 22-piece orchestra, chorus and jazz quartet led by bassist Marcus Shelby.

“I’ve done a lot writing for orchestra, so that part didn’t intimidate me, but I’d never done writing for voice, or writing for a story that hasn’t been shot yet,” says Blanchard, who’s working on a second Opera Theatre of Saint Louis commission based on “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” journalist Charles Blow’s memoir.