Last week I went to the second production of San Francisco Opera's season, Dead Man Walking by Jake Heggie & Terrence McNally, based on the book by Sister Helen Prejean about her work as a spiritual advisor to a convict on death row in Louisiana, & how that work changed both of them. The opera had its world premiere here 25 years ago. I saw it then & was impressed by it; a quarter of a century & many, many operas later, I remain impressed by it. It's an especially impressive piece of work when you consider that it was the first opera Heggie wrote. You don't just stumble into such power, though it took considerable insight for those who put the commission together to realize it was implicit in the pleasant young man who had written some pleasing songs.
I think there's often a tendency to be a bit dismissive of Heggie; I have found his music consistently interesting & appealing, elegant though also strong & forceful as needed. I haven't always liked the texts he has set, but although I have some (mild) reservations about McNally's libretto for Dead Man Walking, it is a perfect subject for Heggie (& how did they realize it would be? these are the mysteries of art). He often deals with dark subjects, but I think Heggie is not essentially drawn to darkness, but to the movement from darkness to light. That is why the portrayal of the journey (a key word in this opera) of Sister Helen & the convict Joseph De Rocher seems to me an artistic triumph, whereas Heggie's Moby-Dick left me unsatisfied. I will be the face of love for you is a Heggie sentiment; From Hell's heart I stab at thee! is not.
Interestingly, there are a couple of spots in the opera when the music is muted or silent; the first is in the opening scene, depicting the brutal rape & murder of two teenagers by the De Rocher brothers. After an uneasy trembling opening, the music sort of drops out & what we hear is what's playing on the teenagers' car radio. The silence adds to the tension & horror of the scene; we expect music, but there isn't any.(The orchestra resumes full force in the second scene, showing Sister Helen & Sister Rose (Brittany Renee, a bright & strong presence throughout) singing a hymn with a group of the children they serve at Hope House.) The second time, when we are given not intermittent but complete silence, is during the execution itself. It's an interesting choice, to leave this key moment in silence (not exactly silence, of course, as there really is no such thing; we hear the ominous mechanical metronome-like beeping of the death machinery). It was a controversial choice at the premiere. The musical shock of silence increases our awareness of what is happening. It sets it apart. Perhaps the music is the enveloping social & emotional & psychological bonds of this world, something apart from the cold & silent hand of state-administered death. Perhaps it is only the portrayal of life, not death, that interests the composer.
Heggie's music for this work is strong & encompassing, with distinctive regional touches – old-school hymns, delta blues, some Elvis Presley when the nun & the killer bond over a shared love of the King. Patrick Summers was back to lead the orchestra (he also led the premiere), & led a committed & rousing performance, though he does still have his tendency in moments of high drama to let the orchestra cover the singers a bit.
My reservation about the libretto is the very prominent role given to De Rocher's mother. My views are perhaps colored a bit by a those of a friend who went to the premiere production with me; the mother, a struggling but, in her own mind, well-meaning character, struck some family chimes with my friend, who found her not only weak but emotionally manipulative. (I'm not sure I would go quite that far.) Mrs De Rocher was the role taken at the premiere by Frederica von Stade, & of course if you have the opportunity to write for such an artist you're going to seize it, but I felt then & again now that the part could be trimmed back a little. This is no reflection on von Stade or on Susan Graham, who created the role of Sister Helen 25 years ago & has returned to give a touching & truthful portrayal of the mother. But I think we discover what she has to say fairly quickly & some of her time & space would maybe be better spent with the parents of the two victims, who, outside of one powerful ensemble, have little to say or do (with the partial exception of the murdered girl's father, in a complex portrayal by Rod Gilfry).
There really is no answer to the opera's debate, which officially is about justice versus vengeance versus mercy, but really is a surging emotion-driven whirlwind of helpless pain on the part of everyone: the mother who cannot believe the beloved little boy she raised committed such horrible acts, the parents who know their children were cruelly robbed of life, the nun who is trying to figure out a way, guided by her understanding of the teachings of Christ & the Catholic Church, to move them all to a place of understanding, forgiveness, & love. These are impossible tasks, &, as with the John Adams / Alice Goodman The Death of Klinghoffer, no matter where you think you stand on the people & issues portrayed, you're going to feel a bit discomfited, which of course is the point.
I don't see this as an "issue opera" about the death penalty; it's pretty clear, from what we're shown, that it is unjust & inequitable. The drama is more about the struggle to understand & to connect along the way. We the audience have seen what De Rocher did, but he denies it, blaming his brother (who had a better lawyer & got off with a life sentence). But is he simply withholding the truth to avoid giving a justification to those who want to kill him in turn? Was he too drugged out to remember what exactly happened? How far should Sister Helen believe him? And has she, as the victims' parents charged, ignored them in favor of a sentimental identification with an evil man? (She realizes she has made a mistake in not reaching out to them, but, as I noted earlier, I think the opera makes the same mistake in not giving them more prominent voices.)
So here's a little sidelight on the struggle for community & connection & understanding: the couple seated behind me were, at least initially, awful. They kept whispering loudly back & forth; one of them snickered at Sister Helen's description of a nun as "the bride of Christ" (perhaps they had never heard this common metaphor? in any case, it's part of the strange power, illustrated also in the opera, that the celibate hold over the imaginations of people). I gave them The Glare during the whispering, & finally turned around & briefly shushed them, which I am very reluctant to do (if the problem is noise, the solution is not more noise, but I could not face having to listen to their inane chatter for the next three hours). The guy exploded at me. I think he told me to fuck myself; he definitely called me a prick (which struck me as an odd, almost charming word, one not heard much these days). After that they did both shut up for the rest of the opera, fortunately, but there you sit pondering connection & community & forgiveness while being attacked in a theater for letting people know you are there to hear the performers & not some random clown in the audience. Such is the strange interplay between theater & life. Why is life so much more trivial?
Back to the drama on stage. I have already mentioned some of the performers, though not the leads. Jamie Barton gave us a strong Sister Helen, whose struggles with others (notably the prison's recalcitrant chaplain, skillfully portrayed by Chad Shelton as both smooth & gruff) & with herself provide the heart of the drama. She was matched by the Joseph De Rocher of Ryan McKinny, whose strong physical presence masked a recessive & evasive persona that finally gives way, under Sister Helen's influence, to a place of humility & compassion. I've mentioned Rod Gilfry as the murdered girl's father; Caroline Corrales played her mother, & Nikola Printz & Samuel White the parents of the murdered boy, & as mentioned I would have liked to have heard more from them. The entire cast was strong, & the multi-level, cage-like set is extremely effective. Dead Man Walking is, I believe, the most-performed of contemporary operas; this production was a powerful reminder of why this work has already held the stage for a quarter century, & is likely to continue doing so for many more.
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