Margaret Garner website http://margaretgarner.org/
In 2005, Margaret Garner, a new opera based on one of the most significant and controversial fugitive slave stories in pre-Civil War America made its world premiere on stage at the Detroit Opera House.  The project marked the anticipated operatic debut for the highly acclaimed creative team of Grammy-Award winning composer Richard Danielpour and librettist Toni Morrison , celebrated novelist and winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature. Internationally renowned mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves starred in the world premiere.

The opera tells the compelling, tragic, and inspiring story of Margaret Garner’s quest for freedom. Fleeing Kentucky ‘s Maplewood Plantation in 1856 to Ohio , Margaret Garner made the horrific decision to sacrifice her own children when capture was at hand, rather than see them returned to the bonds of slavery.

Beyond the deep historical significance of the Margaret Garner story, the opera, as conceived by Richard Danielpour and Toni Morrison, speaks to audiences on a purely human level.