The highly-praised new opera Blue, which premiered in 2019 at the Glimmerglass Festival, is by the composer Jeanine Tesori, whose musical Fun Home won five Tony Awards in 2015, including Best Musical. The librettist and director is Tazewell Thompson. In telling the story of a black family in Harlem—a police officer, his wife, and their politically active son—the team took inspiration from literary works by James Baldwin, Claude Brown, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. This midwest premiere is also a new production. —L.J.