Anthony Davis, composer of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Central Park Five, a true story adaptation of systemic discrimination. On May 10, 16, and 18, Detroit Opera will present this gripping opera, directed by Nataki Garrett and featuring a new, expanded orchestration by the composer, commissioned by Detroit Opera. The Central Park Five follows the wrongful convictions of five African American and Latino teenagers in the assault of a white female jogger in Central Park. Despite racial injustice, resilience and redemption emerge as the five men fight for freedom.
The Central Park Five is an opera that remains relevant more than 30 years after the initial events occurred. The story of the Five has previously been told in Ken Burns’s 2012 documentary The Central Park Five and Ava DuVernay’s Netflix 2019 miniseries When They See Us. The Five were unjustly convicted of a Central Park rape but exonerated through DNA evidence many years later. A study by the National Registry of Exonerations found that Black people convicted of murder or sexual assault are significantly more likely than their white counterparts to be later found innocent of the crimes. The study reviewed nearly 2,000 exonerations nationwide between 1989 and 2017. Innocent Blacks also had to wait disproportionately longer for their names to be cleared than innocent whites.
“Many operas explore notions of justice, usually in either abstract or historically remote stories,” says Yuval Sharon, Detroit’s Opera artistic director. “But Anthony Davis’s The Central Park Five brings that exploration of justice to the present day. To take the operatic stage and center the stories of Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Korey Wise, Antron McCray, and Raymond Santana means expanding how much this 400-year-old carrier bag of opera can contain. The story may not be easy, but it is one we all must attend. After the huge success Anthony had in Detroit with X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X—which garnered the highest number of single tickets sold for a Detroit Opera production in over a decade—I wanted this community to continue their engagement with his incredible music and storytelling gifts.”
Production History
In 2020, Davis received the Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Central Park Five, which premiered at Long Beach Opera in 2019. The libretto by Richard Wesley is based on the true story of the now Exonerated Five, teenagers Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana Jr., and Korey Wise, who were wrongfully convicted and served time for the brutal rape of a white female jogger in Central Park in 1989. The full opera was reworked from an earlier piece, Five, which premiered in Newark by Trilogy Opera Company at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in 2016. The Central Park Five is one of Davis’s seven operas, which, in addition to X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X (1986), include Under the Double Moon (1989), Amistad (1997), and Wakonda’s Dream (2007). Detroit Opera will present Nataki Garrett’s staging of The Central Park Five, first seen at Portland Opera in 2022.
“Since his pioneering first opera, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, Anthony Davis has helped give American opera … a conscience,” Mark Swed wrote in the Los Angeles Times. Davis is drawn to moments that have transformed our shared cultural landscape. The Central Park Five chronicles one such historical moment. “The prosecution and conviction of the Central Park Five reflect the anxiety of white America as hip-hop became part of mainstream American culture,” Davis says. “Central Park was the battleground between Harlem to the North and the affluent East Side and Upper West Side of Manhattan.” The Central Park Five incorporates a wide range of Black music, from Ellington to the blues and funk grooves. He evokes the sounds of metal bars clanging in prison, and throughout the opera, he uses hip-hop-influenced speech rhythms. Borrowed hip-hop samples include the Tone Loc song “Wild Thing” that the five teens were singing in the park in 1989—the song that was wrongly interpreted by the prosecution attorneys as “wilding.”
Davis says he hopes the experience of hearing and seeing The Central Park Five will be “cathartic for audiences. I want the audience to identify with the Five, to feel what they felt from the false accusations and convictions to the bittersweet vindication with their exoneration.” Nataki Garrett says, “I believe that places like an opera house—these are performing arts venues for the people. The Central Park Five is for the people of Detroit. Everybody should come. The music is beautiful and haunting and celebratory. And I’ll say this as a Black woman: there is an element in this music that is like, I wrote this for you.”
The Central Park Five features an ensemble cast of predominantly Black performers who display enormous range and talent. Four performers reprise their acclaimed depictions of roles they have sung previously: Babatunde Akinboboye (Raymond’s Father/Matias Reyes), Nathan Granner (Korey Wise), Elliott Paige (Antron McCray’s Father), and Todd Strange (Donald Trump). Making their debuts in The Central Park Five are Freddie Ballentine (Kevin Richardson), Markel Reed (Yusef Salaam), Amanda Lynn Bottoms (Sharonne Salaam), Justin Hopkins (Antron McCray), Catherine Martin (Assistant District Attorney), and Chaz’men Willilams-Ali (Raymond Santana). Returning Detroit Opera performers include Babatunde Akinboboye (Valentin in Faust in 2022) and Catherine Martin (Waltraute in Twilight: Gods in 2020). Daniel Belcher (Father Palmer in Michigan Opera Theatre’s Silent Night in 2016) returns to portray the role of The Masque/ Judge. Detroit Opera Resident Artist Brianna J. Robinson will portray Antron’s Mother/Kevin’s Mother.
Conductor Anthony Parnther makes his Detroit Opera debut with The Central Park Five, which he led at Long Beach Opera. Parnther has conducted many of the world’s preeminent artists and ensembles, and helms recording sessions for top international feature films and television series. His projects include Sinners, Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Encanto, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Nope, Creed III, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, Tenet, American Dad!, Turning Red, Star Wars: The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett, League of Legends, and the Grammy-winning Oppenheimer soundtrack. Parnther is music director of the San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra and is conductor of Gateways Festival Orchestra, an ensemble of the Gateways Music Festival, the New York-based nonprofit that connects and supports professional classical musicians of African descent.
Unjust Incarceration
Nataki Garrett on the production’s real-time relevancy: “It’s important that we keep telling our stories—to deepen empathy, deepen activism, for people to see themselves and their stories validated. We are seeing the continued wrongful incarceration of citizens without due process. While many people know the story of the Exonerated Five, there are countless other people we don’t know who’ve had to survive treacherous attacks on their freedom.”
According to the University of Michigan Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab, between 1974 and 1993, at least 24 individuals were wrongfully convicted in Wayne County before later being exonerated. Exonerees, including Ledura Watkins, Dwight Love, Darrell Siggers, Desmond Ricks, and others, lost a cumulative 496 years of their lives to wrongful convictions.[1] With 169 wrongful convictions in state courts since 1989, Michigan has the fifth-most exonerations in the country, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
Organizations such as the Michigan Innocence Clinic have helped to exonerate many. Davontae Sanford, who was imprisoned as a 14-year-old for a crime he did not commit, was released from prison in 2016. The following year, the Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act took effect in Michigan, enabling wrongfully convicted ex-prisoners to seek payment of $50,000 for each year served. Of the 103 people who filed claims between 2017 and late 2023, about 68% received compensation.[2]
Community Events
On March 17, Detroit Opera co-presented “From Injustice to Advocacy: An Evening with Dr. Yusef Salaam” at the Wright Museum of African American History. The featured guest was Dr. Yusef Salaam, activist, poet, New York City councilmember, and one of the Exonerated Five. Dr. Salaam gave a firsthand account of his experience and recited some of the poetry he wrote, which provided inspiration during his incarceration. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Charles Davis III, a faculty member of the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education and director of the Campus Abolition Research Lab at the University of Michigan.
Detroit Opera will host several additional events throughout metro Detroit, together with community partners: the University of Michigan School of Social Work, the Wright Museum of African American History, and Restorative Justice Detroit. Events are designed to provide a community space for shared experiences and conversations about issues covered in the opera.
The Central Park Five
Saturday, May 10 at 7:30pm
Friday, May 16 at 7:30pm
Sunday, May 18, at 2:30pm (followed by post-performance discussion)
Detroit Opera House
Tickets start at $30, available at detroitopera.org or 313.237.7464.
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