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Scott Davenport Richards, a member of the Cali School composition faculty, recently participated in a workshop performance of his new opera Blind Injustice at the Cincinnati Opera. He called the experience “…one of the most gratifying artistic, social justice and political weeks of my life.” Scott Richards and David Cote’s new opera will receive its world premiere in a July 2019 production that has already sold out.

Listed as #4 in OperaWire’s 10 Must-See Productions of the Summer, the opera tells the stories of six unjustly imprisoned people and their struggles to prove their innocence with the dedicated help of attorneys and law students at the Ohio Innocence Project (OIP). A collaboration between Cincinnati Opera, the OIP and the Young Professionals Choral Collective (YPCC), the work is based on casework and the book Blind Injustice by University of Cincinnati law professor and OIP Director Mark Godsey, as well as interviews with the six exonerees. The opera brings to life the grace, perseverance, and forgiveness of these men and women using a cast of 12 principals, a chorus of 24, a 12-piece orchestra, and will feature Joseph Lattanzi, Eric Shane, Samuel Levine. Robin Guarino directs and John Morris Russell will conduct the premiere performances in the Cincinnati Music Hall’s Wilks Studio.