Detroit Opera’s new production of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, directed by Robert O’Hara and conducted by Kazem Abdullah, will premiere at the Detroit Opera House on May 14, 2022 with additional performances on May 19 and 22.

Described by The New York Times as “a riveting and uncompromising work,” X pairs Anthony Davis’s distinctly American score with a libretto by Thulani Davis and story by Christopher Davis, casting an unflinching look at one of the most influential men in American history in all of his complexity.

X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X details the life, transformation, and ultimate assassination of Malcolm X in a series of fast-moving vignettes, spanning his boyhood in Lansing, Michigan; his early brushes with the law; his conversion to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam; his own ministry and his breach with Elijah; his
pilgrimage to Mecca, and his assassination.