United States Heggie, Dead Man Walking: Soloists, Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra / Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor). Metropolitan Opera, New York, 6.10.2023. (RP)
Production:
Director – Ivo van Hove
Sets and Lighting – Jan Versweyveld
Costumes – An D’Huys
Projection – Christopher Ash
Sound – Tom Gibbons
Cast:
Sister Helen Prejean – Joyce DiDonato
Joseph De Rocher – Ryan McKinny
Mrs Patrick De Rocher – Susan Graham
Sister Rose – Latonia Moore
Father Grenville – Chad Shelton
Warden George Benton – Raymond Aceto
Owen Hart – Rod Gilfry
Kitty Hart – Wendy Bryn Harmer
Prison Guards – Christopher Job, John Hancock
Older Brother – Mark Joseph Mitrano
Younger Brother – Jonah Mussolino
The earth did not really stand still, but perhaps the ground beneath the Metropolitan Opera wobbled a bit when Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking opened the season. The production launched both the new season and the Met’s Neubauer Family Foundation New Works Initiative. The Met’s goal is to premiere 15 to 20 contemporary operas over the next five seasons. It will not be a first for the Met, but it has not happened in over a century.
It is a risk, but one the Met believes it must take to attract new and more diverse audiences. Budget crunches and the reality of tectonic demographic shifts are problems that are no longer possible to kick down the road. The Met is not alone in facing these challenges.
Dead Man Walking has its detractors who bewail the opera’s length and pastiche of a score, as well as the late Terrance McNally’s overly sentimental libretto, but it has staying power. According to the program, Dead Man Walking has received 75 international productions with more than 400 performances by opera companies of all sorts on five continents. Who can buck such success?
It didn’t hurt that Sister Helen’s book and a Hollywood blockbuster starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, both with the same title, paved the way. It is not the first opera, however, to gain popularity on the back of a popular novel, play or whatever: some Mozart, Verdi and Puccini favorites would top that list.
Although based on fact, the story has been fictionalized in the opera. The prisoner to whom Joyce DiDonato’s Sister Helen ministers is Joseph De Rocher, performed by Ryan McKinny. De Rocher, who has been convicted of the brutal rape and murder of a teenaged couple and sentenced to death, is the composite of two death row inmates to whom Sister Helen served as spiritual advisor when helping them prepare for their executions.
Ivo van Hove’s production is pretty basic, and the action takes place in institutional settings. A public school in a poor New Orleans neighborhood and the Louisiana State Prison in Angola do not exactly cry out for the Franco Zeffirelli touch. The use of video to provide visual interest and amplify the emotional impact of some pivotal scenes is a mixed bag. It works with the crime unfolding on film as the overture plays, even though it is pretty horrific to watch. Similar footage reappears during Sister Helen’s later visit to the scene.
It becomes obtrusive, however, when the faces of DiDonato and McKinney are beamed live as they sing extended soliloquies. An onstage camera crew doing the filming is also overkill. Watching McKinny’s face as he awaits the lethal injection and dies, however, is powerful stuff. Aficionados of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange know how terrifying such close-ups can be.
DiDonato’s Sister Helen is determined, and her faith is constant, but this nun is not without her personality quirks and faults. When faced with the parents whose children were murdered by De Rocher, she concedes that she should have been more sensitive to their feelings and needs. Heggie has hailed DiDonato as the definitive interpreter of the role, and it is indeed one in which she invests all her estimable gifts as singer and actor.
It is almost impossible to equate McKinny’s De Rocher with his spunky, high-spirited turn as Mozart’s Figaro a few seasons ago. The physical transformation is amazing, as is the depth he brings to the role, to say nothing of his feat of singing while doing push-ups. McKinny permits DeRocher’s impregnable veneer to shatter minutes before he is to die, when he admits that he did commit the murder.
Sister Helen’s prayers and efforts paid off. DeRocher goes to his death with the hope that the parents of the teenagers may find some comfort in it: wishful thinking on his behalf, however, in light of an earlier scene that revealed the emotional core of the opera. It came when Susan Graham’s Mrs Patrick De Rocher, dressed as a working-class everywoman, pleaded for her son’s life before the Pardon Commission. No one stirred, let alone drew breath, in the vast expanse of the Met during that emotionally shattering scene.
That is when it hit home that Dead Man Walking is more than a story about a nun doing good. It is also about the collateral damage caused by a horrific crime. When Rod Gilfry’s Owen Hart, the murdered girl’s father, lashes out at Sister Helen, one’s heart ached for every parent portrayed in the opera. Heggie and McNally, who was wild about opera, knew how to throw a punch to the gut.
Other compelling actors enriched the performance. Latonia Moore’s ebullient Sister Rose was far more grounded in reality than DiDonato’s dreamier Sister Helen. Chad Shelton’s Father Grenville was annoyingly self-satisfied and dismissive of the do-good nun’s ministry. Raymond Aceto made for a compassionate and realistic prison warden.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin achieved a rare integration of orchestral music and stage action that added to the power of the performance. He is one of the drivers of the Met’s renewed emphasis on contemporary opera. The commitment and passion that he, as well as the Met’s chorus and orchestra, brought to Dead Man Walking bodes well for the next chapter in the company’s history.
Rick Perdian