American composer Anthony Davis’ 2019 opera The Central Park Five has been awarded one of the world’s highest honours.
Known for his operas that incorporate themes of race and injustice, Anthony Davis’ opera tells the story of five innocent African American and Latino kids between the ages of 14 and 16 who were unjustly convicted of the rape of a jogger in New York’s Central Park in 1989. The five were eventually exonerated through DNA evidence after being incarcerated for 13 years.
The opera was described by the Pulitzer jury as, “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.”
The opera premiered in 2016 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. A revised version of the opera premiered at California’s Long Beach Opera in June of last year.
Before The Central Park Five, Davis captured attention with X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, and Amistad, a story of a slave revolt on 19th-century Spanish schooner. Both operas preceded films on both subjects by Spike Lee and Stephen Spielberg.
Anthony Davis joins previous Pulitzer Prize For Music winners Ellen Reid (2019), Kendrick Lamar (2018), Du Yun (2017), Henry Threadgill (2016), Julia Wolfe (2015), John Luther Adams (2014), and Caroline Shaw (2013). For a full list, see here.
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