Commonweal Magazine

This Is Our Opera
September 2023

Jake Heggie is the composer of ten operas, including works based on Moby-Dick and It’s a Wonderful Life. His first opera, Dead Man Walking, adapts a memoir by Sr. Helen Prejean, whose work as a spiritual advisor to inmates on death row and advocacy against capital punishment helped bring about a major revision to the Catechism of the Catholic Church under Pope Francis.