“I want people to experience the opera so they identify with them, so they think they’re one of the five,” said Mr. Davis, who wrote harrowing music for the interrogation scenes that led to what the young men later said were coerced confessions.

Derrell Acon, the bass-baritone singing the role of Antron McCray, one of the five, organized a conversation series with local community groups to discuss some of the issues raised by the opera. Some have drawn hundreds of people. But he said that ultimately the opera itself was the most powerful communicator.

“With opera it’s like: Here’s a story, I’ll tell you what the story is, and I’m giving it to you in this very raw, emotional way, singing with my heart,” he said. “It’s almost like as audience members you don’t have a choice but to listen. How you deal with it, or what you do next is up to you.”

Memoir as jazz-inflected opera: ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’

“When I was in my 20s, man, I wanted to be Miles Davis — but then when you get a little bit older you can still listen to Miles Davis but you understand that that was him, and you have to find your own thing,” Mr. Blanchard said in an interview. “That’s kind of the relationship I’m having with Puccini’s music right now.”

After the success of his first work for Opera Theater of St. Louis — “Champion,” in 2013 — Mr. Blanchard was asked by the company to come back for more. “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” is based on the memoir of the same title by Charles M. Blow, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times. The book centers on Mr. Blow’s upbringing in a segregated town in Louisiana; the scars left by childhood molestation; meditations on masculinity and sexual identity; and efforts to escape cycles of violence.