This live recording of Davis's two-act opera, based on the infamous rebellion on the slave ship La Amistad in 1839 and setting a libretto by the composer's cousin Thulani Davis, was made during two of the premier performances mounted in November/December 1997 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, which commissioned the work. Conducted by Dennis Russell Davies and directed for the stage by George C. Wolfe, the cast included Thomas Young (The Trickster God), Mark S. Doss (Cinque), Stephen West (John Quincy Adams), Florence Quivar (Goddess of the Waters), and Mark Baker (Navigator). The present release includes a handsomely produced eighty-three-page booklet containing stimulating introductory articles by George E. Lewis and Anthony Davis, a full set of performers’ biographies, a plot synopsis, helpful historical and cultural notes (by the librettist) that describe the principal dramatic roles, and the full libretto of the opera, liberally illustrated with production stills.

The opera as performed in 1997 differs significantly from a leaner and more compact version of the score subsequently prepared by Davis for its in-the-round revival at the Spoleto Festival USA in 2008 (on which occasion it was performed, with great historical irony, in the former slaving port of Charleston, South Carolina), for which the composer made a number of cuts, reorganizations, and a major reduction of the instrumental forces. Critical responses to the revised version were somewhat warmer than those that had attended the premier staging, and the present recording of the latter at times provides a reminder of the occasional longueurs that had threatened to detract from the dramatic fluidity that the librettist's and composer's powerfully imaginative conception of the story so patently deserved. Yet listeners coming to the opera for the first time through the agency of this recording will still be overwhelmed by the sheer vitality of the music in its original form and (even without being able to see the compelling stagecraft) the vividness and originality of the basic dramatic conception, which avoids a rigidly chronological approach to the events and includes evocative and sometimes surreal flashbacks. More importantly, the dynamism and nervous energy of much of Davis's music constantly prevents the opera from succumbing to any ponderous (if perhaps understandable) earnestness that a politically sensitive topic of this kind might have engendered, and that arguably impeded Steven Spielberg's uncharacteristically stolid Amistad film—coincidentally released in 1997 at almost exactly the same time as Davis's opera was launched, although the Davis project had been in the making for some ten years.

Davis's compositional idiom is a heady mixture of jazz-derived elements and the advanced tonalities of the modern concert hall, and his technical dexterity allows him to move with convincing ease from something as hackneyed as a whole-tone scale to more sophisticated harmonic formulations that sometimes verge on atonality. Much of his music is infectiously propelled by dance-like additive rhythms and motoric ostinato patterns, some suggestive of minimalism, and others directly inspired (both texturally and tonally) by Indonesian gamelan music. Jazz elements are frequently brought to the fore by an ensemble of two reeds, trombone, bass, and traps and well suit the feeling of tensely repressed nervous energy that is an overriding feature of the opera—a mood sometimes prolonged at great length at the expense of extended moments of repose and reflection, of which there are relatively few. Whereas the inclusion of scat improvisation, blues-tinged saxophone solos, and jazzy percussion might have jarred sharply in the context of a film score intended for a period drama (such as John Williams's music for Spielberg's Amistad, in which cultural references are restricted to quasi-tribal singing and sporadic ethnic drumming), in Davis's opera the contemporary jazz references not only pay overt tribute to the musical glories of African American culture but are also perfectly in accord with the stylized theatricality and energy of the work's staging.

Without exception, the performances on these discs (preserved with exemplary clarity and tonal range by the engineer) are first rate. The orchestral playing under Dennis Russell Davies impresses with its necessarily taut rhythmic control, finely judged pacing, and tempo contrasts, and the occasional passages of luminous instrumentation in the drama's more impressionistic moments are beautifully rendered. Of the principal sung roles, the two African deities deserve special mention. Thomas Young's Trickster God is a tour de force of manic virtuosity, hitting perilously high notes with astonishing ease and effortlessly negotiating the severe demands of some exceptionally challenging vocal writing; since the Trickster's role—as both commentator and participant—is an important cohesive factor in the overall conception of the work, Young's brilliance is largely responsible for the powerful impact of the recording as a whole. Florence Quivar, as the Goddess of the Waters, is perfectly cast in a role that is accorded the most extended lyrical set piece in the entire opera, and her vocal maturity allows her to achieve an emotional depth all the more memorable for the scarcity of female voices amid the inevitably male-dominated casting.