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.