This is the second recording of Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. The first appeared in 1992 on the Gramavision label some six years after the 1986 premiere by the New York City Opera. The story of the opera’s gestation and birth is told in engrossing detail in the booklet by the opera’s librettist, Thulani Davis (the composer’s cousin).

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s new account appears as X is getting a new lease on life. This past May, the Detroit Opera staged a new production of the opera. This recording was made following a live performance given in June. And in 2024, X will be presented at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. A few changes have been made to the score over the intervening decades – a little tightening here and there as well as some new material added (most notably a brief new scene between Malcolm and his wife Betty at the end of Act 2).

Curiously, the opera feels very much of the moment even though the music seems to me to be slightly dated. The composer writes that he ‘imagined an American opera that drew equally from the African diaspora and the European, where the immediacy of the improvised and subversive spirit of the blues meet the form and structure of a post-tonal harmonic language of Berg and Stravinsky’. At times, the combination of jazz improvisation (a key element in the score) and classical modernism does indeed create marvellous friction, yet there can also be a dourness in the musical language that may simply be a product of its time. That said, I’m loath to judge X without having seen it. (I arrived in New York some years after the premiere, so I’m champing at the bit to see it at the Met. And I’m hoping that some of the scenes that feel overlong to me on disc will feel more dramatically incisive in the theatre.) I should add that even when Davis’s writing is at its most jagged and dissonant, there’s usually some kind of rhythmic and/or harmonic ostinato that not only anchors the music but also generates tension.

It helps a great deal that the libretto is very finely wrought. Thulani Davis gives us the essential scenes of the protagonist’s life, from his traumatic childhood to his imprisonment, his conversion to Islam, his activism and assassination, and she does so – almost miraculously – without resorting to hagiography. Her verses manage to be at once poetic and strikingly matter-of-fact. This leaves the work’s impact very much dependent on the musical production.

If pressed, I’d say the older recording (reviewed 4/93) is more handsomely sung overall, starting with Eugene Perry, in the title-role, who sings with polish and power. Davóne Tines, on this new set, can show signs of strain in his upper register, yet when all is said and done, it’s Tines who gives us a more richly nuanced portrait. Not only does he trace Malcolm’s trajectory from lost soul to prophet but he does so with a sense of the man’s frailties as well as his strengths. Victor Robertson is thrilling in the dual roles of Street (who leads young Malcolm astray) and Elijah (who introduces him to Islam) – and I’m intrigued by the way their interaction seems to echo the musical relationship between Moses and Aron in Schoenberg’s opera. Soprano Whitney Morrison is touching as Malcolm’s mother in the opening scenes and later as his wife, although her counterpart on the previous recording has better diction as well as greater evenness throughout her range.

Gil Rose’s tempos and pacing fit the drama better than William Henry Curry’s (for Gramavision) – Rose and his orchestra illuminate a wealth of detail – and I only wish that the choral singing here was as tonally and rhythmically secure as it is on the previous recording. Given that the Gramavision set is long out of print (although it’s available for streaming on some services), and that the new recording reflects revisions to Davis’s score, this is a most welcome – and timely – release.