‘Blue’, about racist police brutality, is an overwhelming whole ★★★☆☆

“Take off the hoodie.” No hood, no cap backwards, no tattoos and make sure you have your driver’s license and a library card in your pocket. A father tells his son that he looks suspiciously different and is therefore not safe on the street. But the father is late. The son is no longer alive.

It is one of the most poignant scenes in the opera blue. Monday evening was the European premiere at Dutch National Opera. It is universal sadness, parent loses child, but this opera is also and above all about racism in America. The family that takes center stage is black. The son is shot dead by a white police officer (‘blue’ refers to the police uniform). The irony is that the father is also a police officer, which creates a rift between him and his artistic and activist son, who regularly has to deal with the police because of his participation in (non-violent) protests. During such a protest he is eventually shot dead.

Librettist and director Tazewell Thompson claims to have been inspired by Greek tragedies, in which events are not shown but told, in this case sung. In blue do you not see the death scene of the son. In the first act you see how the 16-year-old boy argues with his father (bass baritone Kenneth Kellogg with deep sensual voice), who as a police officer stands for everything he is against. In the second act you look at the white coffin with flowers, the grieving parents and the compassion of their congregation.

The directing is straight forward. Set pieces (a bed, a table, the coffin) are rolled or lifted onto the stage by the cast themselves. It makes the scene clear and a good counterpart to the music of Jeanine Tesori; an intense mixture of musical, blues and bombast. At first hearing it is accessible tonally (sweet strings, harp), but there are ethereal passages in which the singers have no support at all from the accompanying music. After floating parts – with a thick orchestral sound underneath – there is again recognition through fragments of spirituals. The solid volume of the Residentie Orkest conducted by the Canadian conductor Kwamé Ryan makes the whole even more overwhelming. The disadvantage is that the singers regularly go down.

The juiciest voices and most beautiful roles have the mother’s three girlfriends. Again following the Greek example, these are like goddesses of fate, who may not so much determine the fate of the boy who is still unborn at that moment, but who rightly view the future as dark. The ladies – the South African sopranos Vuvu Mpofu and Thembinkosi Magagula and the American mezzo-soprano Rehanna Thelwell – are delightful to see and hear. True Afro-New York sounds ‘Damn, girl!’ when they see a picture of the handsome father (compliments to language coach Roberta Alexander).

So there is also something to laugh about, but the sadness hangs above everything. That makes the first act in particular a bit long-winded: we understand and feel it, so so much explanation in the form of dialogues is not necessary. The epilogue contains too long an enumeration of dishes that the mother makes to soften her son – now again or still alive – and husband. Despite its lengthy nature, that scene is sad and comforting at the same time.