In 1989, Trump took out full-page newspaper ads demanding the death penalty "for roving bands of wild criminals." The Detroit Opera decided to program this work long before the presidential election.
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At a rehearsal last month for the opera The Central Park Five, singers wearing soft athletic pants and baseball caps warmed up by a piano. The opera is based on a real-life tragedy, about a group of Black and brown teenagers wrongly charged and imprisoned for the brutal attack on a female jogger in New York’s Central Park in 1989.
The Central Park Five won the Pulitzer Prize for music for composer Anthony Davis in 2020; it debuted the year before at the Long Beach Opera in California. The opera has also been staged at Oregon’s Portland Opera. Now, the Detroit Opera is producing the work from May 10-18 in Michigan.
“I wanted the audience to empathize and to identify with the Five,” Davis said of the young men, who were mostly only 14 and 15 years old at the time of their arrests. “I thought that the story was a story of perseverance.”
Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam were all exonerated in 2002.
Another real-life character in the opera is now the president of the United States. Back in 1989, President Trump was best known as a Manhattan real-estate developer and nightlife fixture. When the Central Park Five went on trial, Trump took out full-page newspaper ads demanding the death penalty “for roving bands of wild criminals.”
“That was the beginning of Donald Trump’s political career, was the Central Park Five,” Davis said.
The Detroit Opera decided to program this work three years ago, he notes, long before the last presidential election. In the original production, Trump sings an aria while sitting on a golden toilet in his penthouse apartment.
“What kind of city is this?” he sings. “When decent people, decent people, cannot feel safe on the street! That ends right now! This ends right now! Support our police! Bring back the death penalty!”
The Detroit Opera is presenting the aria in a less incendiary manner.
“He’s not on a golden toilet,” Davis said. “We didn’t have the golden toilet because, frankly, the focus should be on the Five and not on him. He’s a character within the story and a necessary character because he’s a big part of the story. You know, he’s never apologized. He never apologized for his actions and his rush to judgment.” (The Central Park Five sued Trump for defamation for statements he made during a presidential debate last year; that lawsuit is ongoing.)
Nataki Garrett, director of the Detroit Opera’s production, dismissed a suggestion that there might be pressure, self-imposed or otherwise, to tone the staging down.
“Not for me,” she said. “It was not me thinking I should tone it down. It was me making a decision that the central story is about these boys. Why center that, when you can actually speak to the lives of these young men who are now grown men, who have lives themselves and who have taken their journey through this trauma to really impact their communities in the most positive ways. That story is so much richer to me.”
“This opera is a real reckoning,” added Anthony Parnther. The conductor of this production of The Central Park Five is having a moment; he also conducted the score for the acclaimed movie Sinners, in theaters now. He noted that both scores draw from a wide range of American musical idioms.
“Jazz, blues, bebop, R&B, soul, you know. But, [Anthony Davis’] music oftentimes is sort of, like, high modernist meets really complex jazz,” he said.
“I can’t think of an opera that is more technically daunting than this one because it really requires such an ear from every single singer,” Parnther continued. “They basically have to physically memorize all of these very complex rhythms and these very difficult-to-predict pitches. But everything that he’s written is utterly compelling, and in his own unique harmonic vocabulary that I’ve not seen replicated anywhere else.”
Garrett, the director, acknowledged that the opera is being produced in Detroit at a moment when stories that tell uncomfortable truths, especially about power and race, are being politicized, and sometimes even silenced. (NPR broke the story of how Garrett received threats of racial violence and death while she was directing the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2022.)
“You know, the stories that we tell as artists are not our own,” she said. “They belong to humanity. We are the reflectors. That’s what we do. And so why do we know about most of the terrible things that have happened in history? Because somebody reflected it. And so that is our job. Exposing the truth helps us connect to our deeper humanity, helps us connect to our empathy, which is what the world needs more of, especially right now.”
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Transcript:
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
An opera about the Central Park Five is now on stage in Detroit. The opera won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2020. It’s based on a real-life story about a group of Black and brown teenagers wrongly charged and sent to prison for a brutal attack on a female jogger in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. Back then, Donald J. Trump was not yet president, but he took out full-page newspaper ads demanding the death penalty for the young men. Those men were eventually exonerated. Trump is a villain in the opera, and NPR’s Neda Ulaby spoke with its producers about staging it during this administration.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Are we starting with music?
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: At a recent rehearsal for the opera called “The Central Park Five,” singers in sweatpants and baseball caps warmed up by a piano. The story they are performing has been told many times since the young men, who were mostly only 14 and 15 years old at the time of their arrests, were exonerated in 2002. There’s been a PBS documentary and an Emmy Award-winning Netflix miniseries, but composer Anthony Davis heard an opera in the depths of this drama.
ANTHONY DAVIS: I wanted the audience to empathize and to identify with the Five.
ULABY: Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam – Davis wanted to express their individual personalities on stage, but he says it was also a musical opportunity.
DAVIS: So it gave me a chance, for example, to do five-part harmony where they sing together. I was thinking of how people sing on the street, coming from gospel traditions and also from groups like Boys II Men and Take 6.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing) Will you let us go home?
ULABY: This scene takes place after the five teenagers have been brought to the police station.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing) Can we go home? Can we go home now?
DAVIS: They were held 36 hours without food and water and interrogated mercilessly.
ULABY: Even before composer Anthony Davis won the Pulitzer Prize, he was acclaimed for writing operas like one about Malcolm X that premiered here in Detroit and was staged recently by the Metropolitan Opera. This, the third production of “The Central Park Five,” was planned by the Detroit Opera three years ago, says its conductor, Anthony Parnther.
ANTHONY PARNTHER: I can’t think of an opera that is more technically daunting.
ULABY: Parnther also conducted the score for the hit movie “Sinners,” now in theaters. Both works, he says, draw from an incredible range of American musical idioms. “The Central Park Five” incorporates jazz, R&B and, of course, modernist classical music.
PARNTHER: It really requires such an ear from every single singer. They basically have to physically memorize all of these very complex rhythms and these very difficult-to-predict pitches.
ULABY: The hardest part in the opera, he says, belongs to a female character – the assistant district attorney.
PARNTHER: I mean, all of the parts are difficult, but I think the DA has the spikiest part. The voicing is brutal.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, singing) (Inaudible).
ULABY: The opera’s action is driven by music sung by characters representing the legal system, says Nataki Garrett. She’s directing the Detroit Opera’s production of “The Central Park Five.”
NATAKI GARRETT: Embedded in the music is a kind of metronome feeling, and there’s a mechanism that is moving. And their jobs are a part of this machine, and so there’s something in the music that reminds you that this is the system working as it was supposed to work. It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. And you can feel that in the music.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character, singing) Did you, did you, did you…
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, singing) Did you, did you…
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1 AND UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As characters, singing) Do this?
ULABY: The first time “The Central Park Five” was staged in 2019, there was an aria sung by the character Donald Trump, calling for the death penalty while he sits on a golden toilet. That staging is not in this production. I asked director Nataki Garrett if there was a decision to tone it down.
GARRETT: Not for me – it was not me thinking I should tone it down. It was me making a decision that the central story is about these boys.
DAVIS: Frankly, the focus should be on the Five and not on him.
ULABY: Composer Anthony Davis – he says Trump remains an important part of “The Central Park Five” opera and shows audiences part of his path to the presidency.
DAVIS: That was the beginning of Donald Trump’s political career – was Central Park Five.
ULABY: Trump is a character in another opera Davis is writing right now. It’s based on a children’s book called “Pancho Rabbit And The Coyote: A Migrant’s Tale.” It’s set on the southern border. All the characters are animals. Trump is a golden snapping turtle. Davis says opera is a way to reflect history back to ourselves, and in the case of the Central Park Five, to be reminded that justice comes from determined work.
DAVIS: I think the message of the opera is one of their perseverance.
ULABY: And empathy and hope.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character, singing) The cops said the other guys…
ULABY: Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character, singing)…My name in this. How they going to do that to me?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character, singing) Say the words (ph). The cops call it the truth, but it’s not the truth I know.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: If the other guys are going to use my name, I will do the same to them.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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