With our community partner the University of Michigan School of Social Work, Detroit Opera has prepared a Reflection and Resource Guide to help you respond to the themes raised by our production of The Central Park Five, performed at the Detroit Opera House May 10 – 18, 2025. Click the image below to download the...
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From our colleagues Tia Graham and Ryan Patrick Hooper at WDET Detroit: Three years ago, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X sold out shows at the Detroit Opera House for the first time in over a decade. Now, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer behind that success is back in Detroit. Anthony Davis returns this...
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From the assembly lines of the Motor City to the rhythms of Motown and techno, Detroit is a city forged in struggle and creativity. But its history includes people with almost unimaginable survival stories: decades in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. These Detroiters were wrongfully convicted—some as children, others by the manipulation of police...
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Enjoy the performance program from the convenience of your phone! All the information contained in the program book is at your fingertips. Click below for the full experience.
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Detroit Opera offers complimentary opera and dance talks one hour prior to each performance. Noted experts provide background and important information on what you will see on stage, enhancing your performance experience! Opera Talks and Dance Talks provide an insightful and entertaining preview of the works performed on stage. Unless otherwise directed, Talks take place...
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What does it mean to make art from inside a prison? To create while confined? To imagine freedom while physically restrained? Babatunde Akinboboye as Matias Reyes in The Central Park Five. (Portland Opera) These are lived realities for thousands of incarcerated people in Michigan who find meaning, expression, and power through creative work. For...
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An advertisement for Movement Festival at Detroit’s Packard Plant. From the clang of assembly lines at Ford’s Rouge Plant to the deep thump of bass at an underground techno rave, the Motor City has spent a century dancing with automation. But what happens when the machines start dancing back? When robots don’t just build our...
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If Mozart were alive today, would he swipe right on a chatbot? by Austin T. Richey, Ph.D. Digital Media Manager and Storyteller, Detroit Opera L to R: Oliva Boen as Fiordiligi and Emily Fons as Dorabella in Detroit Opera’s Così fan tutte (Austin T. Richey) In Così fan tutte, love is a game of disguise,...
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Automatons, Enlightenment, and Early AI by Austin Richey, Ph.D. Digital Media Manager and Storyteller, Detroit Opera Imagine yourself in a Viennese salon, sometime around 1780. Candlelight flickers across parquet floors and gold-leafed mirrors, while the hum of intellectual conversation mingles with the delicate strains of a string quartet. Lace sleeves brush crystal goblets, and powdered...
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From Pygmalion to AI Girlfriends by Austin Richey, Ph.D. Digital Media Manager and Storyteller, Detroit Opera Humans have been falling for machines—emotionally, philosophically, and occasionally romantically—since long before Siri flirted back. Ameca, a humanoid robot created by Engineered Arts (2023) Opera is full of grand romances, heartbreaks, and impossible love. But what happens when...
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