‘Dead Man Walking’ Review: A Death-Row Drama at the Metropolitan Opera

With Ivo van Hove’s new staging of Jake Heggie’s opera about Sister Helen Prejean’s role as an adviser to a man condemned to die, the Met continues to embrace contemporary works. 

By 

Heidi Waleson

Oct. 3, 2023 at 5:06 pm ET

Wendy Bryn Harmer, Rod Gilfry, Joyce DiDonato, Krysty Swann and Chauncey Packer

PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND

Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2023-24 season on Sept. 26, a Met premiere that was symbolic on many levels. When the piece had its world premiere in San Francisco in 2000, new works were occasional events in American opera houses, sprinkled delicately, even apologetically, into seasons of standard repertory for fear of rebellion from traditional audiences. Yet this season, extrapolating from the sellout crowds that attended its productions of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” in 2021 and Kevin Puts’s “The Hours” in 2022, the Met is banking on a whopping six contemporary works, one-third of the total number of productions, to bolster its generally flagging box office.

Things have clearly changed over 23 years. The rate of creation and production of new works at American houses has accelerated, particularly in the past decade, with plucky companies like Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Opera Philadelphia along with smaller, experimental outfits like the Prototype Festival and the Industry leading the way. In 2016, the first year that the Music Critics Association of North America gave a “Best New Opera” award, Missy Mazzoli’s “Breaking the Waves” was selected from a rich field of 18 North American world premieres. 

“Dead Man Walking” also normalized the idea that opera could and should tackle contemporary subjects and stories. Earlier works like John Adams’s “Nixon in China” (1987) were once derisively called “CNN Operas.” By contrast, the success of “Dead Man Walking,” based on Sister Helen Prejean’s 1993 book (also a 1995 film) about her experiences as spiritual adviser to prisoners on death row, made the controversial topic of capital punishment a fit subject for the opera house. It is the most frequently produced new opera of this century, with a remarkable 75 productions, often accompanied, with Sister Helen’s participation, by symposia and panel discussions. Its many successors include works on such up-to-the-minute topics as LGBTQ issues (Laura Kaminisky’s “As One,” Gregory Spears’s “Fellow Travelers”); police killings of black men (Jeanine Tesori’s “Blue”); and Alzheimer’s disease (Lembit Beecher’s “Sky on Swings”). In June, San Francisco Opera will present the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence,” which deals with the fallout from a school shooting. 

Ryan McKinny

PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND

Terrence McNally’s libretto traces Sister Helen’s relationship with Joseph De Rocher, a prisoner convicted of the rape and murder of a high-school-age couple, as his last appeals fail and his execution date approaches. Much of the opera takes place within the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, and the Met’s marquee production team, headed by Ivo van Hove with set and lighting design by Jan Versweyveld, created a strikingly austere environment: a blank-walled box, with a smaller cube suspended above the stage. 

No bars or shackles are visible; An D’Huys’s drab costumes blend in; and Christopher Ash’s scene-establishing projections are reserved for the outside world—a blurry but still explicit video of the crime, which is played several times, and the road that unfurls as Sister Helen makes her first long drive from New Orleans to Angola. In the prison, subtle lighting color changes and precise directing evoke the lonely horror of imprisonment and impending death that affects both principal characters. In a few of scenes, two onstage camera operators film their faces in close-up, projecting their expressions onto the upper cube and offering an additional window into their feelings. The camera also zoomed in as the lethal injection needle was inserted into De Rocher’s arm, and on the sudden widening of his eyes as the poison took effect, bookending the shock of the opening killing with a concluding one.

The production supplied some of the weight and interiority that the opera itself lacks. The libretto carries the story; Mr. Heggie’s music doesn’t create or develop characters, relying instead on a noisy, propulsive orchestra and multiple climaxes. Scenes are often too long. The insipid earworm hymn associated with Sister Helen seems at odds with her dynamic personality, as do her meandering arias; it’s hard to find De Rocher’s mix of fear and aggression in his music. When Mr. Heggie does provide a lyric tune, the moment often comes across as manipulative rather than authentic.

The top-flight cast made the most of the piece. Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who first sang Sister Helen at the New York City Opera in 2002, was all coiled intensity, visibly and audibly grappling with her determination to hate the sin but love the sinner. Bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, buff and tattooed, poignantly captured some of the insecurity underlying De Rocher’s macho posturing and bravado. As Sister Rose, Helen’s confidante, soprano Latonia Moore shone with Ms. DiDonato in one of the opera’s best moments, a duet about forgiveness. Susan Graham, who sang Sister Helen at the San Francisco world premiere, took on the role of Joseph’s mother, Mrs. De Rocher. Her plea for his life at the pardon hearing was acutely characterized with deliberate fumbling; even better was the final meeting of mother and son, just before his execution, when she refused to let him apologize or confess. 

Rod Gilfry, Krysty Swann, Wendy Bryn Harmer and Chauncey Packer were affecting as the parents of the murder victims. Raymond Aceto, Chad Shelton and Justin Austin had lively cameos as the prison’s warden, its condescending priest, and the motorcycle cop who stops Sister Helen for speeding and then lets her go. Yannick Nézet-Séguin let the orchestra loose with all its noise and bombast. 

The three other Met premieres this season are all vintage: Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” (1986) in a newly revised version, co-produced with four other companies; Daniel Catán’s “Florencia en el Amazonas,” a well-traveled Spanish-language work from 1996; and John Adams’s “El Niño” (2000), which will feature notable Met debuts by singers Julia Bullock and Davóne Tines, conductor Marin Alsop, and director Lileana Blain-Cruz. “Fire” and “The Hours” are being revived. The initiative will continue: A new $10 million gift from the Neubauer Family Foundation has been earmarked to subsidize 17 Met premieres from 2023-24 through 2027-28. Some will no doubt be brand new; others selected from the enormous wealth of new opera that has emerged over the past two decades. The Met has finally caught up, and is going all in. Rightly so. New work is the future of opera.

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).