Jeanine Tesori’s Blue Presented at Lincoln Center
The New York City debut of Tesori’s acclaimed opera launches her 2025–2026 season as Lincoln Center’s Visionary Artist.
Composer Jeanine Tesori’s acclaimed opera Blue will receive its long-awaited New York City premiere this fall in a co-presentation by The Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and Lincoln Center Theater at David Geffen Hall. The staged concert performance on November 15 marks a significant homecoming for Tesori, a native New Yorker, and inaugurates her season as Lincoln Center’s 2025–2026 Visionary Artist.
> Nov 15: Jeanine Tesori, Blue
Created in collaboration with librettist Tazewell Thompson, Blue (2016) confronts urgent contemporary themes through the story of a Black police officer and his family grappling with the killing of their teenage son. The work, which won the Music Critics Association of North America Award for Best New Opera, has been hailed for its emotional depth, musical sophistication, and relevance to the social landscape of modern America.
“At this stage in my career, I want to write about subjects that I feel are missing in the operatic canon,” Tesori has said. Blue embodies that mission, blending Tesori’s sensitivity to the human voice with a bold musical language that bridges opera, gospel, and jazz-inflected contemporary styles.
Since its 2019 world premiere at the Glimmerglass Festival, directed by Thompson, Blue has entered the modern operatic repertoire with productions in Washington, D.C., Seattle, Minnesota, Detroit, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, and Toledo, as well as at English National Opera and Dutch National Opera. Critics worldwide have praised both Tesori’s score and Thompson’s libretto for their honesty, compassion, and artistry.
“The music is majestic and sweeping, yet intimate and personal,” wrote OperaWire. BBC Music Magazine described Thompson’s text as “eviscerating in its fury and grief … yet painfully full of tenderness, love, and humor,” while The New York Times called Tesori’s score “strong yet subtle … avoiding the obvious and exuding a personal voice.” The Guardian praised the opera as “powerful.”
As Lincoln Center’s Visionary Artist, Tesori will be celebrated throughout the 2025–26 season with a multidisciplinary series exploring the power of artistic connection—between creators, audiences, and the many organizations that comprise the Lincoln Center campus.
In addition to Blue, the season at Lincoln Center will feature Tesori’s musical theater masterwork Violet performed in American Sign Language by Deaf Broadway; a film screening of Steven Spielberg's West Side Story (for which she served as supervising vocal producer) in collaboration with Film at Lincoln Center; a public community choir series inviting audiences to sing together; and a conversation series tracing the threads of storytelling across disciplines.
> Further information on Work: Blue (full orchestral version)
Photo: Karli Cadel / Courtesy of Washington National Opera