Blind Injustice, receiving its NYC premiere by MasterVoices in February 2025, tells the stories of six people wrongfully convicted and incarcerated, serving 117 years behind bars before their release and exoneration. In this episode, composer Scott Davenport Richards and librettist David Cote speak with host and fellow composer Randall Eng - whose Remain was premiered by MasterVoices in 2018 - about how the opera developed. Their deep dives into specific scenes and songs will enhance your listening experience - whether live at Rose Theater or on the Fanfare Cincinnati recording!

• What opera can do, beyond “what is should be”.
• Each story could have been an opera of its own… feedback from exonerees helped shape the music and words.
• The Chorus as a character - the jury, the world, the system, the prisoners, the mob.
• Getting the Job Done
• What Makes a Person…
• 5/4, asymmetry, and broken people
• Musical styles that represent all the peoples of the United States. Listen for echoes of Sesame Street, 90s New Jack, PBS, and Go-Go (the official music of Washington DC)
• Deep dives into the richly textured numbers “Blind Spot,” “Wonder of Forensics” and more!

RANDALL ENG is an award-winning composer of opera, music-theatre, and works in between. He is Resident Composer and full-time faculty member at New York University’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program; his operas Florida (libretto by Donna DiNovelli) and Henry’s Wife (libretto by Alexis Bernier) were highly praised in presentations at New York City Opera’s VOX festival, the Public Theater’s New Work Now! Festival, Lyric Opera Cleveland, the Shaw Festival, Galapagos Arts Space, and Metropolis Opera, among others.  http://randalleng.com/

SCOTT DAVENPORT RICHARDS has been commissioned by New York’s Public Theater, Signature Theatre (Virginia), and others. His operas A Star Across the Ocean—Paris 1965 featuring Chuck Cooper, and Charlie Crosses the Nation, An Opera in Jazz Idiom, were featured in New York City Opera’s Vox Festival.  He has written several play-scores and children’s works; as an actor he originated the role of Sylvester in the original Broadway Production of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and assisted his father, Lloyd Richards, in the origination of three other Wilson works. scottdavenportrichards.com

DAVID COTE is a playwright, opera librettist, and arts journalist. Previous operas include Three Way (Nashville Opera and BAM); The Scarlet Ibis (Prototype); and 600 Square Feet (Cleveland Opera Theater). Plays include The Müch, Saint Joe and Aristotle Punches Down (O’Neill National Playwrights Conference semi-finalist). The longest-serving theater editor and chief drama critic of Time Out New York, he is the author of popular companion books about Broadway hits including Moulin Rouge!, Spring Awakening, and Wicked. davidcote.com/

The MasterVoices Podcast is a project of the New York City nonprofit MasterVoices (previously The Collegiate Chorale), whose mission is using the human voice to connect, inspire, and unite. Founded in 1941 by Robert Shaw, the Chorale was one of the first integrated choruses in the United States.

Learn more at www.mastervoices.org.