Detroit Opera Steps Into Trump’s Cross Hairs With ‘Central Park Five’
By Robin Pogrebin. Reporting from Detroit. April 28, 2025. Photo: Brittany Greeson for The New York Times.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning opera features Donald J. Trump, whose 1989 full-page newspaper ad sought to demonize the young men wrongly accused of rape.
A rehearsal of “The Central Park Five,” an opera about the Black and Latino boys wrongly convicted of raping a Central Park jogger, was just a few days old this month when the tenor who plays Donald J. Trump began to sing.
“They are animals! Monsters!…Support our police! Bring back the death penalty!” he bellowed.
The opera, which chronicles how the young men were forced to confess and later were exonerated, depicts President Trump as an inflammatory figure who, in 1989, bought several full-page newspaper ads that demonized “roving bands of wild criminals,” adding, “I want them to be afraid.”
When the work — composed by Anthony Davis with a libretto by Richard Wesley — premiered in California in 2019, Mr. Trump’s approval ratings were low and Democrats were itching to challenge him.