'Central Park Five' opera – with Donald Trump as a character – to open in Detroit
By Duante Beddingfield and Andrea May Sahouri, Detroit Free Press. Photo Austin T. Richy/Detroit Opera
Detroit Opera is going straight to the headlines for its latest subject. This weekend, the company will present “The Central Park Five,” composer Anthony Davis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning adaptation of the true story of systemic discrimination and racial injustice that forever altered the lives of five young men in late 1980s New York City.
Directed by Nataki Garrett, “The Central Park Five” follows the wrongful convictions of five African American and Latino teenagers in the assault of a white female jogger in Central Park. After serving their sentences, they were later exonerated through DNA evidence. Their story has been told in Ken Burns’ 2012 documentary “The Central Park Five” and Ava DuVernay’s 2019 Netflix miniseries “When They See Us.”
On Saturday, May 10, their story will be told at the Detroit Opera House, and along with the five main characters, audiences will also recognize another key figure in the opera: President Donald Trump.
In the roiling heat of the Central Park Five backlash in 1989, Trump – then a New York real estate mogul – placed full-page ads in New York City’s newspapers, calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York and the execution of the five Black and Latino boys, despite no proof of their guilt.