A new production of a revised version was launched in May 2022 at Detroit Opera and directed by Robert O'Hara. The premiere recording of X was released on the Gramavision label in August 1992 and received a Grammy Nomination for "Best Contemporary Classical Composition" in February 1993. 

A new recording with BMOP and Odyssey Opera was released in October 2022. Davis won a Pulitzer Prize for his recent opera, The Central Park Five. Davis's second opera, Under the Double Moon, a science fiction opera with an original libretto by Deborah Atherton, premiered at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in June 1989. 

His third opera, Tania, with a libretto by Michael-John LaChiusa, based on the abduction of Patricia Hearst, premiered at the American Music Theater Festival in June 1992. A recording of Tania  was released in 2001 on Koch, and in November 2003, Musikwerkstaat Wien presented its European premiere. A fourth opera, Amistad, about a shipboard uprising by slaves and their subsequent trial, premiered at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in November 1997. Set to a libretto by poet Thulani Davis, the librettist of X, Amistad was staged by George C. Wolfe.

As a composer, Davis is best known for his operas. X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, which played to sold-out houses at its premiere at the New York City Opera in 1986, was the first of a new American genre: opera on a contemporary political subject. A new production of a revised version was launched in May 2022 at Detroit Opera and directed by Robert O'Hara. The premiere recording of X was released on the Gramavision label in August 1992 and received a Grammy Nomination for "Best Contemporary Classical Composition" in February 1993. A new recording with BMOP and Odyssey Opera was released in October 2022. Davis won a Pulitzer Prize for his recent opera, The Central Park Five.

Davis's second opera, Under the Double Moon, a science fiction opera with an original libretto by Deborah Atherton, premiered at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in June 1989. His third opera, Tania, with a libretto by Michael-John LaChiusa, based on the abduction of Patricia Hearst, premiered at the American Music Theater Festival in June 1992. A recording of Tania  was released in 2001 on Koch, and in November 2003, Musikwerkstaat Wien presented its European premiere. A fourth opera, Amistad, about a shipboard uprising by slaves and their subsequent trial, premiered at the Lyric Opera 

of Chicago in November 1997. Set to a libretto by poet Thulani Davis, the librettist of X, Amistad was staged by George C. Wolfe.

Anthony Davis represents Black struggle through opera….

A graduate of Yale University in 1975, Mr. Davis is currently a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego as well as the Cecil Lytle Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in African and African-American Music. In 2008 he received the "Lift Every Voice" Legacy Award from the National Opera Association acknowledging his pioneering work in opera. In 2006 Mr. Davis was awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Mr. Davis has also been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the NYC Foundation of the Arts, the National Endowment of the Arts, the Massachusetts Arts Council, the Carey Trust, Chamber Music America, Meet-the-Composer Wallace Fund, the MAP fund with the Rockefeller Foundation and Opera America. He has been an artist fellow at the MacDowell Colony and at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy.

Musical Intro "FREEDOM"by June Allison & Jonva Ven