Jake Heggie was a novice at composing opera when acclaimed playwright Terrence McNally collaborated with him to adapt Sister Helen Prejean's memoir Dead Man Walking. But Heggie's background in both concert music and musical theatre served him well, first time out. Heggie's music propels the action, sustains tension under monologues, and ties scenes together thematically. Though I had not seen the opera since it was new (Cincinnati Opera, 2002), Heggie's music instantly brought back emotional memory of that first time: the dread during the prologue, the warmth of an original hymn tune "He Will Gather Us Around," and, most of all, the heart - breaking pavane as each parent remembers the last words they said to their children.
While the real Sister Helen Prejean speaks out against the death penalty, Heggie and McNally don't stack the deck. They leave no doubt that "Joseph DeRocher" (Michael Mayes, baritone) is entirely guilty, dramatizing his savage murder of a teenage couple; nor is there ever doubt that the death penalty by lethal injection will be executed on him. They don't make "Sister Helen" (Jamie Barton, mezzo - soprano) a saint: challenged to say if she "really" believes "this monster deserves to live," she replies, "I believe that is what my Lord and Savior wants me to believe. I'm trying to get there." Confronting the parents, she appears to be what they tell her that she is, naïve, oblivious to their needs while she attends to the convict, and ineffectual as she repeats, "I'm sorry... I'm sorry." Meanwhile, DeRocher is defensive, pugnacious, unwilling to admit his guilt.
Instead of taking one side, Heggie and McNally go inside: They ask, what good, if any, can be salvaged from the horrible situation that DeRocher himself created for himself and for all the others? One of the parents "Owen Hart" (Wayne Tigges, bass), remarks to "Sister Helen" that he and she are both victims of the killer. As many scenes take place in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, we also see that the inmates and officers are equally trapped, frightened, and resentful of each other.
Our sympathies are engaged most strongly when "Mrs. Patrick DeRocher" (Maria Zifchak, mezzo - soprano) testifies to a clemency board, her two younger boys watching, along with Sister Helen and the parents of the victims. Singing simply of her son when he was a child, she's interrupted by Mr. Hart's plain description of what DeRocher did to his daughter. What follows is the moment of the opera that I've never been able to discuss with anyone, because (even now) I tear up. (In 2002, I'd looked forward to seeing diva Fredricka Van Stade in the role; but I was so wrapped up in this drama that I didn't realize until intermission that she had been the mother.)
The singing actors played their roles with energy and integrity; the orchestra and chorus were strong and clear.
While Dead Man Walking sidesteps easy answers, one unfortunate image in Atlanta's production makes me uneasy in another way. Because the convicted killer is strapped down for lethal injection, his arms are spread in a manner that could be construed to make him Christ - like. I've surveyed still images from other productions to see that some designers have wisely chosen to play down that resemblance; only Atlanta's production punched it up, making the execution chamber's wall cruciform. That's a jarring and inappropriate statement imposed on the action. At his end, Joseph De Rocher seeks forgiveness, and he looks for love in the face of Sister Helen; but he is not anyone's redeemer, innocent sacrificial lamb, or a sacrifice of any sort. The designer's intrusion marred the production in its last moments.
[I met Jake Heggie a few years ago, at the Atlanta premier of his opera Three Decembers. See my post of 05/31/2015.]
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