Dead Man Walking Returns to SF Opera

Like a virgin, I saw Dead Man Walking at the San Francisco Opera for the very first time last Saturday. I never read the 1993 bestselling memoir by Sister Helen Prejean detailing her work with Louisiana death row convicts, nor the Oscar-winning 1995 film with Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, nor the 2002 play written by actor/director Tim Robbins, nor any production of the 2000 opera composed by Jake Heggie to a libretto by playwright Terrence McNally. (Click here for an interesting essay by Heggie about their collaboration.)

The work was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera under General Director Lotfi Mansouri who loved turning his favorite movies into operas, for instance A Streetcar Named Desire and Dangerous Liaisons. This season's return is a triumphant homecoming after its San Francisco Opera premiere 25 years ago and innumerable productions around the world. The current production is a flashy, Broadway-style staging with lots of scenery flying in and out by director Leonard Foglia that has been touring the country for years. Unfortunately, I didn't care for the opera at all. (All production photos by Cory Weaver.)

The problem certainly was not the singers, because there was luxury casting throughout, starting with mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton as Sister Helen. Barton currently has one of the richest voices in the operatic world and it's a pleasure to hear her sing just about anything, but Heggie's vocal lines were so dull that her gifts felt wasted.

The divine mezzo-soprano Susan Graham performed Sister Helen at the 2000 premiere, and she returned to play the mother of the convicted murderer, a role originated for another legendary mezzo-soprano, Frederica von Stade. She was ably supported by Nikola Printz, Caroline Corrales, Samuel White, and the great veteran baritone Rod Gilfrey as the grieving parents advocating vengeful justice.

Gilfrey also appeared in last year's SF Opera co-commission, Kaija Saariaho's Innocence, which dealt with a community destroyed by a school shooting. Dead Man Walking's libretto is filled with out-of-place Broadway humor, platitudes about grief, and moral transcendence cliches while Saariaho's masterpiece was filled with nuance, ambiguity, and genuine power. Innocence also had an amazing, interesting musical score while Heggie's music sounds like background for an old-fashioned movie, except for the prison choruses which sound like they were lifted directly from Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd.

The convicted rapist/murderer Joe De Rocher, sung beautifully by baritone Ryan McKinny, is a fictional composite of two death row prisoners that Sister Helen wrote about (the same is true of the film). He's written as a weak, manipulative man drowning in lies who needs Sister Helen's spiritual advice in order to face the truth and take responsibility for his misdeeds.

This role has become something of a homoerotic barihunk showcase, since the singer spends most of the opera in a tank top and underwear, which feels a little jarring. So does the nudity of the two teenagers who are raped and murdered in the opening prologue of the opera, which felt gratuitously shocking. This is the third time I have seen a naked man onstage in a Terrence McNally play (after The Lisbon Traviata and Love! Valour! Compassion!), and it has always come across as prurient rather than theatrically relevant.

The final scenes have De Rocher finally telling the truth to Sister Helen Prejean, apologizing to the grieving parents of his victims, and ends with an interminable scene where he is given a lethal injection by a supernumerary. Sister Helen Prejean has changed much public sentiment and official Catholic attitudes over the last three decades towards capital punishment, and more power to her. I'm sorry that I didn't like this paean to her work better.