Review: Richards-Cote INJUSTICE Opera Gives Hope that Truth is Not BLIND

Anyone who’s spent enough time watching network TV knows an American criminal justice system that is built around simplistic stories of the good guys (hard-working prosecutors and police detectives) putting away the bad guys (“perps” of all stripes) with the help of brilliant DNA evidence that points the way to the truth.

That’s not exactly the impression that we get from BLIND INJUSTICE—the opera by composer Scott Davenport Richards and librettist David Cote that had its New York debut this week with a pair of performances at Jazz from Lincoln Center’s Rose Theatre.

Coerced confessions, lying or misinterpreted witnesses and the misapplication of forensic science are just the tip of the iceberg of much of what we discover—though we also find people who have managed to hang onto their humanity despite exposure to inhumane treatment, sometimes for decades.

Based on the work of the Ohio Exoneration Project of the University of Cincinnati College of Law (and the book of the same name by Mark Godsey), it tells stories of a half dozen people who have wrongly been convicted and incarcerated for as long as 39 years and lived to tell the tale before their innocence was brought to light by the Project.

The performance was under the taut musical leadership of Ted Sperling, with his MasterVoices chorus and a 12-piece orchestra, and director/dramaturg Robin Guarino. They led a strong cast of acting singers—baritone Phillip Bullock, tenor Thomas Capobianco, tenor Joshua Dennis, baritone Eric Shane Heatley, mezzo Briana Hunter, the multi-faceted Marc Kudisch, soprano Reilly Nelson soprano Victoria Okafor, baritone Joseph Parrish, bass-baritone Christian Pursell, tenor Orson Van Gay II, and bass-baritone Miles Wilson-Toliver--to outdo our expectations at every turn.

The principals in particular—notably tenors Capobianco and Van Gay, sopranos Nelson and Okafor, baritones Bullock and Heatley, bass-baritones Pursell and Wilson-Toliver and Kudisch—were stunning in bringing their characters (sometimes many characters) to life.

The simple but effective staging used costumes by Tract Christensen, lighting by Jason Flamos, sound by David Meschter, with hair and makeup by J. Jared Janas and Cassie Williams.

The result was that BLIND INJUSTICE made for a sometimes-grueling evening that told of survival in the face of the worst that this country’s legal system has to offer (that is, until the present time). The score by Richards used many styles—jazz, opera, hip-hop—to put the many aspects of the evening across and while the libretto by Cote worked hard to bring us into the individual stories. Perhaps there were too many major characters to do them all justice in the 90-minute running time, but it is quibbling to try to choose what material could have been cut.

Ultimately, the evening gave some reason for hope for others who have been wrongfully convicted of heinous crimes—though who knows what lies ahead in a country running amok.

Photo credit: Erin Baiano

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