Using Opera to Shine a Light on Wrongful Imprisonment

Near the end of “Blind Injustice,” an opera about six people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes and later freed, the exonerees reflect on the time they have spent behind bars.

“What makes a person strong enough to endure injustice?” they sing. “What makes a person free?”

Questions of prejudice, guilt and resilience run throughout “Blind Injustice,” composed by Scott Davenport Richards to a libretto by David Cote, which has its East Coast premiere on Friday at Peak Performances at Montclair State University.

The work, which was commissioned by Cincinnati Opera and premiered there in 2019, explores the effects of wrongful convictions on the prisoners and their families, and the help to overturn their convictions that they received from the Ohio Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

One man who was sent to death row describes spending 39 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of murder. A bus driver falsely accused of sexual abuse describes the pain of being separated from her four children. “Oh Lord, protect them!” she sings. “Oh, God! Deliver me!”

And a mother of a young man accused of murder pleads for his release. “Smash bricks into dust!” she sings. “Bust it! Bust it! Bust it! Bust this goddamned prison down!”