by Mike Telin
This weekend, Chagrin Arts will present the Northeast Ohio premiere of Blind Injustice at Outcalt Theatre in Playhouse Square.
Based on Ohio Innocence Project co-founder Mark Godsey’s book of the same name and interviews with six people who had their convictions overturned, the 90-minute opera will be presented on Friday, July 11 (sold out), Saturday, July 12 at 7:30 pm, and Sunday, July 13 at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available online.
We caught up with composer Scott Davenport Richards and librettist David Cote on Zoom.
Mike Telin: Who originally approached whom about creating this opera?
David Cote: The Cincinnati Opera reached out to me because they heard about my work, but the director, Robin Guarino, was already attached to the project. At the time, she was running the opera program at Cincinnati Conservatory, so I flew out there, met her, and we hit it off. We did some initial interviews with the exonerees. So we had a framework, but we needed to find the perfect composer.