“Composer Anthony Davis won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for music on Monday for ‘The Central Park Five,’ an operatic tale of racial injustice that had its world premiere with Long Beach Opera last June,” write Jessica Gelt and Makeda Easter in Monday’s (5/4) Los Angeles Times. “The Pulitzer committee called ‘The Central Park Five,’ with a libretto by Richard Wesley, ‘a courageous operatic work, marked by powerful vocal writing and sensitive orchestration, that skillfully transforms a notorious example of contemporary injustice into something empathetic and hopeful.’ … Davis lived in New York during the Central Park jogger case. Nearly 30 years later, he began working on ‘The Central Park Five’ around 2014 after reading the libretto by Wesley…. Davis drew inspiration from music of the era, including R&B boy groups Take 6 and Boyz II Men and the hip-hop group Public Enemy. Davis has prioritized telling black history through opera. His first opera, ‘X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,’ opened in 1986. In 1997 he premiered ‘Amistad,’ based on the rebellion of Mende captives on a Spanish slave ship.” The two other Pulitzer finalists were Alex Weiser’s song cycle and all the days were purple and Michael Torke’s Sky: Concerto for Violin.
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