For Your GRAMMY® Consideration
Best Opera Recording
Best Engineered Album, Classical
Best Contemporary Classical Composition
The Central Park Five
Long Beach Opera
Anthony Parnther, conductor
Anthony Davis, composer
Richard Wesley, librettist
WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE
Sung in English, The Central Park Five dramatizes the true story of the “Exonerated Five” – Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise – five Black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted in the 1989 rape and assault of a woman jogger in Central Park. After years in prison, the young men were exonerated through DNA evidence and the confession by the actual perpetrator of the crime.
The opera traces their arrests, coerced confessions and unjust trials against a backdrop of racial prejudice – weaving an intimate, nuanced and deeply human portrait of justice and perseverance. Musically, Davis draws on jazz, contemporary classical, R&B, and hip-hop to underscore the drama and create a portrait of Black American music that stretches across time and genre.
The Central Park Five was originally commissioned and premiered by LBO at Warner Grand Theatre in June of 2019. The full orchestration was commissioned by Detroit Opera, and LBO brought the opera to audiences again in a new production in 2022 at Jordan Auditorium on the campus of Long Beach’s Jordan High School. Following this second production, Long Beach Opera brought the cast and conductor Anthony Parnther to Silent Zoo Studios in Los Angeles to create the first studio recording of the piece, engineered by Greg Curtis.
The opera has received critically acclaimed productions across the U.S., including those by Portland Opera and Detroit Opera, and is published by Schott Music. The release highlights LBO’s rich legacy of taking risks on bold, urgent new works – and investing deeply in their commissions to create meaningful, lasting cultural impact.
PRINCIPAL CAST
Lacy Jo Benter (District Attorney)
Bernard Holcomb (Kevin Richardson)
Orson Van Gay (Raymond Santana)
Ashley Faatoalia (Korey Wise)
Cedric Berry (Yusef Salaam)
William Powell III (Anton McCray)
Justin Ryan (The Masque/Judge)
“Dark, propulsive, and, at times, wrenchingly lyrical.”
“Forthright and impassioned.”
“...the real draw involves the way the conductor, Anthony Parnther, holds together the score’s many stylistic inputs.”
“The jazz elements are deftly integrated into the generally atonal classical structure, a third-stream amalgam of which Davis is a master, and conductor Anthony Parnther makes them swing.”