As Detroit Opera officials made plans last fall to bring a production based on the Central Park Five to their 2025 lineup, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump loomed large and just off stage.

The opera puts to music the story of five Black and Latino teens imprisoned for the 1989 rape and beating of a white woman in New York’s Central Park and prominently features Trump as a real estate showman calling for the death penalty in the case.

Booking the production reflected a modern commitment to adding diverse and contemporary stories to opera houses in Detroit and elsewhere in the U.S., stages where classic composers have long reigned.

A scene from Detroit Opera’s performance of Anthony Davis’s “The Central Park Five,” with Catherine Martin, left, on stage, and Todd Strange, and

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