A True Story

Anthony Davis' poignant Pulitzer Prize winning opera The Central Park Five comes to Detroit courtesy of the Detroit Opera. The gripping work examines the real-life story of five wrongfully convicted Black and Latino teenagers in 1980s New York and their battle for justice. Expertly mixing jazz, gospel and contemporary classical music, this modern masterwork is a powerful confrontation of systemic racism, offering a searing critique of a deeply flawed legal system.

Premiering in 2019, The Central Park Five is an expanded version of a shorter piece called Five which debuted three years earlier. With libretto by Richard Westley, the groundbreaking work deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2020 and was hailed in the Los Angeles Times and Opera Wire for its delicacy, drama and presentation of a harrowing miscarriage of justice.