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Rehearsal photo
“The Central Park Five,” a compelling opera by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Anthony Davis, will begin its short run on Saturday and continue on May 16 and 18 at the Detroit Opera House at 1526 Broadway St. in downtown Detroit.
The Central Park Five follows the story of the wrongful convictions of five African American and Latino teenagers in the 1989 assault of a white female jogger in New York's Central Park. Despite the racial injustice they faced, resilience and redemption emerge as the five men fight for freedom, according to a press release, which goes on to say:
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 2019 Netflix miniseries When They See Us.
The Five were unjustly convicted of a Central Park rape but were 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 Black individuals also had to wait disproportionately longer for their names to be cleared than innocent white individuals.
The five men in the case are suing former President Donald Trump, alleging he made “false and defamatory statements” about them during the Sept. 10 debate in Philadelphia with Vice President Kamala Harris.
According to public radio station WHYY:
Trump misstated key facts of the case when Harris brought up the matter, saying, “They admitted, they said, they pled guilty. And I said, ‘Well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately. And if they pled guilty — then they pled we’re not guilty,’” Trump said.
The men — Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise — never pleaded guilty; they were convicted after jury trials. Also, no victim died.
Shows are as follows: Saturday, May 10, 7:30pm; Friday, May 16, 7:30pm and Sunday, May 18, 2:30pm. Tickets start at $30 and are available at detroitopera.org. Discounted tickets are available for Detroit residents, students, military/veterans/first responders and groups of 10 or more.
