Modern opera with the X factor

This Saturday, Nov. 18, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” will be broadcast live on the big screen at Newport Performing Arts Center.

Experience the groundbreaking, award-winning opera live from the Metropolitan Opera stage in New York, with better-than-front-row angles and glorious sound.

Theater luminary and Tony-nominated director Robert O’Hara oversees this potent new staging, imaging Malcolm X as an everyman whose story transcends both time and space. An exceptional cast of breakout artists and young Met stars enliven the operatic retelling of the civil rights leader’s life. Baritone Will Liverman, who triumphed in the Met premiere of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” sings the title role, alongside soprano Leah Hawkins as his mother, Louise; mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis as his sister Ella; bass-baritone Michael Sumuel as his brother Reginald; and tenor Victor Ryan Robertson as Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.

Kazem Abdullah conducts the newly revised score, which provides a layered, jazz-inflected setting for the esteemed writer Thulani Davis’s libretto.

“I think the way the opera has been composed really does tremendous justice to Malcolm X, how his voice was, how his aura was, how his effect on the world and on Black America was,” Abdullah said, “It takes you through Black history and Black music history too. As you go from each decade of Malcolm’s life you hear different styles of jazz."

This live transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing world-class opera to screens across the globe. The production is sung in English, and will be broadcast live from the Met stage to the Alice Silverman Theatre.

The broadcast begins at 10 am at the Newport Performing Arts Center, 777 W Olive Street. Run time is approximately three hours 42 mins, with two intermissions. Tickets range from $15.50 to $25.75. For more information, go to coastarts.org or call 541-265-2787.