The Central Park Five, an opera composed by Anthony Davis, tells the story of the five boys from East Harlem in New York, wrongly convicted of the brutal beating and rape of Trisha Melli, who had been jogging in Central Park on April 19, 1989. The boys came to the park on that warm spring night with a large crowd, while a number of robberies and assaults occurred.

HISTORY RECOUNTED

Central Park 5 costume sketches

Davis’ 2019 opera recounts their arrest and interrogation. Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana were 14 and 15 years old; Korey Wise was 16. As the opera unfolds they slowly realize the seriousness of their situation, as they continue to deny their involvement. Donald Trump and a group of white supporters pressure the prosecutor and Assistant District Attorney (ADA) to obtain confessions. The boys’ parents are brought in and although they believe their sons, they ultimately urge them to tell the authorities what they want to hear. The boys make up stories, blame each other, and sign confessions.

Trump continues to pressure the ADA and demands the death penalty in full-page ads in New York newspapers. The four younger boys receive seven years in juvenile, and Korey Wise is given 13 years in prison. Just prior to Korey’s release, another inmate confesses to the assault and rape. The Five are then exonerated.

These bare historical facts are but a tiny portion of the impact that composer Davis created with his opera. His music is so seamlessly woven with the story that it has almost a sub-conscious power throughout. There are no “arias” that pause the movement, although what stands out is the moment when the powerful voice of Yusef’s mother, Sharonne Salaam, defends her son. Davis blends an incredible range of musical styles: jazz, early rap, hip-hop, funk, improvisation, classical and an Indonesian-inspired viola and violin duet that creates an “otherworldly feeling.”

The setting underlines institutional threat and terror. The boys are seen in a row of jail cells, while above them a bare courtroom holds the prosecutor, the ADA and Donald Trump. Transparent curtains rise and fall to portray the city and the newspaper headlines.

RACISM CHALLENGED BY ‘THE FACTS OF REALITY’

Yusef Salaam, Central Park 5 program

An essay by writer Joan Didion had indicted the prosecutors, media and everyday New Yorkers for making the event conform to a narrative they already believed. However, Davis describes his 1986 opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” as an example of how “you can subvert the master narrative of the story.” Ryan Ebright, in his essay “Voicing Truth,” published in Detroit Opera (2025-2026 Season, p. 14), puts it this way:

“What happens when the stories we believe are challenged by the facts of reality? Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis has repeatedly confronted this question with operas that challenge audiences through their frank engagement with race, gender and power in America. He is drawn to what he calls ‘cultural moments’—fissures in history that expose the subterranean forces and tectonic collisions that transform our shared cultural landscape.”

The opera ends with the boys singing their joy at returning home to Harlem. But music director Yuval Sharon wrote (op. cit., p. 1): “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world in which this story was purely of the past?…Why has our culture swung so far and so quickly against all initiatives that attempt to rectify centuries of racial prejudice? How can the arts offer us a vessel for considering these questions as a society?…This past fall, the five men now known as ‘The Exonerated Five’ sued Donald Trump for ongoing defamation of character…” The cacophony of conversation as the diverse crowd headed home indicates that the arts indeed can uniquely generate emotion, thought and dialogue.

–Audience members