Black Voices Rise, Volume II

To coincide with the new staging of Porgy and Bess in 2019, the company paid tribute to generations of extraordinary Black artists with the album Black Voices Rise. This playlist showcases even more stellar voices, with selections drawn from the last four decades of live Met performances. Particular highlights include mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves’s sultry take on “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix” from Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila, tenor Lawrence Brownlee’s showstopping nine high Cs in “Pour mon âme” from Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment, soprano Angel Blue’s thrilling rendition of “Sempre libera” from Verdi’s La Traviata, and a series of excerpts from the Grammy Award–winning production of Porgy and Bess, which returned the Gershwins’ great America opera to the Met stage after an absence of almost 30 years. The nearly two dozen tracks also feature performances from Fire Shut Up in My Bones and Champion by legendary jazz musician Terence Blanchard, who made history in 2021 when he became the first Black composer ever to have an opera presented at the Met.