Detroit Opera will present Anthony Davis’s The Central Park Five on May 10, 16, and 18. Photo: Christine Dong/Portland Opera
DETROIT, May 08, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 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 Black 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, but had to wait disproportionately longer for their names to be cleared.
“Many operas explore notions of justice, usually in either abstract or historically remote stories,” says Yuval Sharon, Detroit’s Opera artistic director. “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.”
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. 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. Detroit Opera will present Nataki Garrett’s staging of The Central Park Five, first seen at Portland Opera in 2022.
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 reflects the anxiety of white America as hip-hop became part of mainstream American culture,” Davis says. 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” which the teens were singing in the park in 1989—a song 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 feel what the Five felt from the false accusations and convictions to the bittersweet vindication with their exoneration.”
Nataki Garrett on the production’s real-time relevancy: “It’s important that we keep telling our stories—to deepen empathy and 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 who’ve had to survive treacherous attacks on their freedom.”
The Central Park Five features an ensemble cast of predominantly Black performers with enormous range and talent. Four performers reprise their acclaimed depictions of roles 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), 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 Artists Brianna J. Robinson and Kendra F. Beasley will portray Antron’s Mother/Kevin’s Mother and Sharonne Salaam.
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 ensembles, and helms recording sessions for top feature films including: Sinners, Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Encanto, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Star Wars: The Mandalorian, and the Grammy-winning Oppenheimer soundtrack. Parnther is music director of the San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra and is the 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.
Performances of The Central Park Five will be held at the Detroit Opera House on Saturday, May 10 at 7:30pm, Friday, May 16 at 7:30pm and Sunday, May 18, at 2:30pm.
Tickets are available at detroitopera.org.
About Detroit Opera
Founded in 1971 as Michigan Opera Theatre by the late Dr. David DiChiera, Detroit Opera is led by President and CEO Patty Isacson Sabee; Yuval Sharon, Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director; Music Director Roberto Kalb; Artistic Advisor for Dance Jon Teeuwissen; and Board Chairman Ethan Davidson. For more information, visit www.detroitopera.org. Follow the company on Facebook and Instagram (@DetroitOpera) and LinkedIn (Detroit Opera).
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f5268511-90ff-4858-b116-7abbf7dc8b3b
Jennifer Melick Email: jmelick@detroitopera.org
