My husband and I attended a virtual Met performance of the titular opera last night. As much as I shun screens, the Met is hundreds of miles away, and I miss it. We are fortunate to have very good opera companies in both SF and SJ, but the venues can’t compete. Five balconies! Sputnik chandeliers that float 65 feet from the ceiling, then ascend! Enormous sets, stacked above the stage and rotated into place! Yannick Nezet-Seguin!

Yannick is not part of the venue, but he holds a place in my heart because he also leads the Philadelphia Symphony, whose chorus includes our younger son, and because he is dedicated to inclusion in the arts. This is the Met’s first production of an opera composed by a Black person, Terence Blanchard. Though this is not his first opera, Blanchard is a jazz musician and film score writer, and the music, orchestration, and singing demonstrated more jazz influence than is usual for opera, though not so much that you would have been wondering whether you had stumbled into a jazz club by mistake.

The opera is based on a memoir by NYT columnist Charles Blow which I have not read. The opera focuses on his childhood struggles, including a single incident of sexual abuse by a cousin. I was apprehensive about viewing this, but the incident was well-handled in the production, leaving most of the act to one’s imagination. That did not make it unaffecting; in fact, I was in tears at the end of the first act, which culminates in the event, and not completely recovered by the end of the intermission. I teared up again at the end, an ending of redemption and personal integrity, though not forgiveness.

Operas usually have what I think of as a boffo component. The protagonist may be discarded by a lover, or cruelly banished from home, or pulled into the depths of hell, yet since the emotion expressed is both extreme and extremely expressed, it may spur a little skepticism or amusement. Sometimes. I feel that way about Tosca, Rigoletto, and Cosi fan Tutti for example, but not about Turn of the Screw, Madama Butterfly, or Aida.

Fire Shut Up in My Bones has plenty of moments of fun and joy, but the emotional journey of the protagonist is raw and compelling, with nary a trace of boffo. For most of the first act, the actors portraying Charles as adult and child are on the stage together, the adult in sort of a magical flashback, observing scenes from his childhood. The singer who portrayed the young Charles was pitch-perfect, and while you may expect that in professional opera, I am referring to his acting as well as his singing. In any case, watching an actual child in this frightening situation amplified the emotional resonance.

The Metropolitan Opera HD Live cinema series is supposed to be simulcast, and there was a simulcast of this performance, but we weren’t keen to see it at 10:00 AM on the weekend, so we bought tickets to the rebroadcast version, which made for a more pleasant date-like event. The performance we viewed was the final one in the run, so in all the ways that matter, we were watching a production that no longer exists. I hope and expect that there will be many other productions of this dramatic and spirited work, and recommend that if you get a chance to see one, you will.