Casting has been announced for the New York City premiere of Blind Injustice, an opera by composer Scott Davenport Richards and David Cote based on Mark Godsey's book of the same name and casework by the Ohio Innocence Project. MasterVoices will present the opera in concert February 3 and 4 at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Blind Injustice tells the stories of six wrongfully convicted exonerees, played by soprano Reilly Nelson; tenors Thomas Capobianco and Orson Van Gay II; and baritones Phillip Bullock, Eric Shane Heatley, and Miles Wilson-Toliver. Tenor Joshua Dennis and baritone Christian Pursell will face off against each other as the attorneys for the defense and prosecution respectively. Victoria Okafor, Briana Hunter, Marc Kudisch, and Joseph Parrish complete the principal cast.

The stage direction and dramaturgy for the concert production are by Robin Guarino, with costume design by Tracy Christensen and lighting design by Jason Flamos. MasterVoices Artistic Director Ted Sperling will conduct the MasterVoices Chorus and Orchestra.

The opera, which had its world premiere at Cincinnati Opera in 2019, is based on real cases taken up by the Ohio Innocence Project, a center that works to free innocent people wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. Four of the exonerees portrayed in the opera—Nancy Smith, Laurese Glover, Clarence Elkins, and Rickey Jackson—will join artists and experts in the field of criminal justice reform for a moderated conversation following both performances.

Blind Injustice is the second opera in MasterVoices' Three in Six program, which aims to produce three contemporary American operas in six years. Ricky Ian Gordon and Michael Korie's The Grapes of Wrath, performed last season, was the first in the series, with the third to be announced.

Visit MasterVoices.org for more information.