Plot and Creation: Champion

Inspired by the True Story of Emile Griffith

The opera Champion was inspired by the true story of boxer Emile Griffith, whose life has been the basis of several books, films, and stage plays, in addition to this opera. Yet despite his incredible record as a fighter—Griffith fought a total of 337 world championship rounds, 69 more than Muhammad Ali—his career was most deeply marked by a profound tragedy: In 1962, following an altercation at the pre-bout weigh-in, Griffith beat his opponent, Benny “Kid” Paret, into a coma during a match at Madison Square Garden. Paret died from his injuries, and the knowledge that he had killed a man would haunt Griffith for the rest of his life.

Griffith’s career attracted new kind of attention after the publication of Ron Ross’s biography Nine… Ten… and Out! The Two Worlds of Emile Griffith (2008). In Ross’s book, the boxer spoke candidly for the first time about his sexuality—and the cruel necessity of keeping his sexual identity secret in an era when being bi- or homosexual could mean the end of an athlete’s career.

Composer Terence Blanchard first heard Griffith’s story from his friend and own boxing trainer, the former heavyweight champion Michael Bentt. It was the duality of a very public life as a boxing champion and a profoundly secret life as a bisexual man that drew him to Griffith’s story. Blanchard has pointed to Griffith’s own grappling with this tension as what inspired him to explore the story in music: “I kill a man and most people understand and forgive me,” Griffith said. “However, I love a man, and to so many people this is an unforgivable sin; this makes me an evil person.”

Act I

A nursing home on Long Island

An elderly Emile Griffith struggles to get dressed, requiring the help of his adopted son and caretaker, Luis. Emile is suffering from dementia, an illness affecting memory and cognition, and Luis reminds him that today he is going to meet with Benny Paret, Jr., the son of a boxer Emile fought decades earlier.

We flash back to the 1950s. A young Emile has just arrived in New York from St. Thomas, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has come to join his mother, Emelda, and to make it big in America as a singer, baseball player, and hat designer. Emelda can’t remember which of her seven children Emile is, but she is glad to see him nonetheless and helps to get him a job. He meets Howie Albert, a hat manufacturer, who notices Emile’s strength and physique. Rather than boxing hats, Howie suggests, Emile should take on a different kind of boxing and train to become a prizefighter. Emile soon becomes a welterweight champion, but he is lonely and confused by his success. One night he makes his way to a gay bar in Manhattan finds a confidante in the owner, Kathy Hagen. He shares with her cruel details of his childhood when he was punished for his sexuality.

It is 1962. Emile meets Benny “Kid” Paret in the ring. At a weigh-in before their fight, Paret taunts him, calling him a Spanish slur for homosexual. Emile is enraged. He tries to explain his anger to Howie but struggles to make his coach understand. Left alone, Emile reflects on what it means to be a man. As Emile and Paret prepare to fight, Paret continues to taunt Emile. Driven to the edge, Emile delivers more than 17 blows in less than seven seconds, leaving Paret in a ten-day coma from which he will never recover.

Act II

Back in his present-day apartment, Emile is haunted by Paret’s ghost.

Another flashback brings us to the mid-1960s. Emile is a successful fighter winning titles and trophies around the world. Yet he remains troubled by Paret’s death. He tries to distract himself by enjoying life. He denies his romantic feelings for men and takes a young bride named Sadie, a decision everyone, including his mother, warns against.

It is now the early 1970s. After his marriage, Emile’s luck has changed, and he now finds himself on a losing streak. He has also started to display signs of trauma-related dementia. Howie tries to console Emile, but Emile rejects him and everyone else around him. Emile returns to Kathy’s bar to find comfort, but outside in the street he is taunted by a group of kids who beat him violently, exacerbating his pre-existing brain injuries.

Back in the present, Emile relives the attack and Luis tries to comfort him. Emile asks Benny Paret, Jr. for forgiveness when they meet in a park in New York City, but Benny Jr. explains that Emile must forgive himself. Back at home, the torment of his past begins to subside, and Emile is able to finally live one day at a time.

The Composition of Champion

1945
Michael Procaccino, who will later gain fame as a playwright, actor, and director under the name Michael Cristofer, is born on January 22 in Trenton, New Jersey.

1962
Composer Terence Blanchard is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He begins piano lessons at age five before switching to the trumpet at age eight.

1977
Cristofer’s play The Shadow Box wins the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and a Tony Award for Best Play. Three years later, Cristofer also writes the screenplay for the film of The Shadow Box, which is directed by Paul Newman and stars Joanne Woodward and Christopher Plummer.

1978
Blanchard enrolls at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.

1988
Blanchard begins his long-term collaboration with filmmaker Spike Lee by playing on the soundtrack to the film School Daze. Four years later, Blanchard composes the music for Lee’s film Malcolm X, the soundtrack of which is subsequently arranged into a suite for Blanchard’s quintet.

2008
Blanchard’s album A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina), based on music he composed for the 2006 documentary film When the Levees Broke, wins a Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album.

2012
The Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Jazz St. Louis co-commission an opera from Blanchard, who suggests the story of Emile Griffith. This same year, Blanchard writes the music for the multiracial Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.

2013
Champion has its premiere at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts at Webster University on June 15. It is Opera Theatre’s 24th premiere in 38 seasons.

2014
Champion is named one of five finalists for the International Opera Award, a prize recognizing global operatic excellence.

2016
Man in the Ring, a stage play about Griffith’s life written by Cristofer, premieres at Court Theatre in Chicago. Meanwhile, opera companies around the United States are embracing Champion. SFJAZZ and Opera Parallèle in San Francisco collaborate on a new production of Champion for chamber orchestra that premieres on February 21. On March 5, 2017, a third production of the opera is premiered by Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In 2018, Champion arrives in Terence Blanchard’s hometown when it is performed by New Orleans Opera, and a production at Michigan Opera Theater is scheduled for 2020.

2019
Blanchard is nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Score for BlacKkKlansman, and the film’s track “Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil)” wins a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition. Blanchard’s second opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, premieres at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

2020
Champion is scheduled to open at Michigan Opera Theater on April 5, but the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in March forces the company to cancel the show. Blanchard’s long-term collaboration with Spike Lee continues with Da 5 Bloods, a film directed and co-written by Lee and released by Netflix. Blanchard’s score is nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Score.

2021
On September 27, Fire Shut Up in My Bones opens the Metropolitan Opera’s season. The first opera by a Black composer to be performed by the Met, and the first opera on the Met’s stage after the 18-month closure occasioned by Covid-19, Fire is a major event on the New York cultural calendar and an instant success. Less than a month later the Met adds Champion to the 2022–23 season.

Emile Griffith

1938
Emile Griffith is born on February 3 in Charlotte Amalie, the largest city on the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Thomas. His childhood is unstable and often miserable. After his father leaves the family, his mother, Emelda, heads to Puerto Rico for work, leaving Emile and his siblings first with their grandmother, and then with their deeply abusive cousin Blanche. Desperate to escape Blanche’s beatings, the young Griffith begs to be allowed to live at the juvenile detention facility, Mandal.

Emelda, meanwhile, moves from Puerto Rico to New York. Over the following years, she will send for each of her children in turn, starting with the oldest, Emile. His four biological siblings and three stepsiblings soon join them.

1956
While working in the supply room at Howard Albert Millinery, a hat factory in Manhattan’s Garment District, Griffith makes the acquaintance of the factory’s owner and one-time amateur boxer, Howie Albert. Spotting Emile’s talent at an early age, Albert convinces Griffith to start boxing and becomes his trainer.

1957
Howie Albert enters Griffith in the amateur Golden Gloves tournament, a prestigious event held annually at Madison Square Garden. Griffith loses his bout but makes a profound impression on those present.

1958
A year later, Griffith wins the Golden Gloves tournament in February. On June 2, he makes his professional boxing debut, which he wins.

1959–60
New York City cracks down on bars and other venues that cater to gay clientele. In the space of one year, more than 40 gay bars in the city are raided by the police and closed. This crackdown on locales that cater to gay clients echoes widespread anxiety over homosexuality during the 1950s: Homosexuality, considered a sin and disease, is illegal in all but one state and punishable by prison, and during the “Lavender Scare” of the 1950s, hundreds of federal workers are fired for alleged or suspected homosexuality and many more are shunned by their communities.

1961
On April 1, Griffith meets welterweight world champion Benny “Kid” Paret in the ring in Miami. Griffith wins the bout—and the title of world champion. It’s the start of an ongoing rivalry between the two boxers. In a rematch on September 30, Paret beats Griffith, and the world-champion title returns to “the Kid.” Yet while the loss to Paret in the ring stings, Griffith seems far more deeply impacted by an event at the pre-match weigh-in, when Paret uses a homophobic Spanish slur to taunt him.

1962
On March 24, Griffith and Paret meet in New York’s Madison Square Garden for their third bout. Remembering the effect his taunts had on Griffith in their previous match, Paret once again takes the opportunity of the weigh-in to taunt Griffith’s sexuality. Griffith is furious. His coach, Gil Clancy, steps between the boxers before Griffith can punch Paret then and there, but Griffith's fury is not quelled. That evening, in the boxing ring, their fight is exceptionally brutal. It ends when Paret slumps down on the ropes, on his way into the coma from which he will never recover.

Griffith is named the winner—and welterweight champion once again—as Paret’s trainers crowd around him. The television announcers, meanwhile, are desperate to avoid dead air on live TV. For the first time ever, the new technology of slow-motion replay is used on a sports broadcast, zooming in on the blows dealt to Paret.

In the early morning hours of April 3, in hospital, Benny Paret is declared dead due to his brain injuries. He leaves behind his two-year-old son, Benny Jr., and his wife, Lucy, who is pregnant with their second child. Nearly 40,000 people attend memorial services that are held in New York and Miami. Paret is buried in Miami’s Our Lady of Mercy Cemetery on April 7; Lucy declines Griffith’s request to attend.

Paret’s death—broadcast live on national television—sparks both a homicide investigation against Griffith and a broader conversation about whether boxing should be banned. Neither the investigation nor the ban come to fruition, but Griffith will never be able to shake the trauma of knowing that he had killed another man in the ring.

1969
For years, police have been staging raids at gay bars in New York. But in June, the clientele at the Stonewall Inn decide to fight back. The protest launches the modern gay rights movement (to this day, gay pride celebrations take place in June to honor the Stonewall protests), but Emile still feels an overwhelming pressure to keep his sexuality hidden.

1971
Hoping to quiet the ongoing rumors about his sexuality, Griffith marries Sadie Donastorg, a young woman from his Virgin Island birthplace of Charlotte Amalie. The marriage will last only two years.

1977
After 112 professional bouts and five world championship wins, Griffith finally hangs up his boxing gloves. His final fight is on July 30 in Monte Carlo.

1978
Following his retirement, Griffith begins working as a trainer at a boxing gym in Manhattan. He works with several boxers and prepares them for their fights. He also takes a job as a corrections officer at a youth detention center in New Jersey, where he meets a young detainee named Luis Rodrigo. After Luis’s release, Emile adopts him as a son.

1992
Griffith, who has been embracing his bisexuality more openly, is attacked by a gang outside a gay bar. He suffers severe injuries, including blows to the head, that take more than six months to heal. After the assault, the first signs of memory loss and confusion that will mark Griffith’s slide into dementia appear.

2004
Filmmakers Dan Klores and Ron Berger, who are creating a documentary about Griffith and Paret’s fight, arrange a meeting between Griffith and Paret’s son, Benny Jr. The two men meet in Central Park. It is a difficult encounter for both, but Benny Jr. makes it clear that he bears Griffith no ill will. Griffith leaves the meeting greatly relieved, finally unshouldering some of the guilt of the past forty years.

2013
Emile Griffith dies on July 23 at the age of 75, after suffering from dementia for many years.