Dead Man Walking • Press Coverage
Featured Coverage
The New York Times: 24 things that stuck with us in 2023
Opera Now: Heggie is a Critics Choice for ‘Dead Man Walking’
ABC Nightline: ‘Dead Man Walking’ makes a unique debut
The New York Times: Death row opera goes to Sing Sing, with inmates onstage
Aria Code: Death, faith, and redemption
Playbill: ‘Dead Man Walking’ finally at the Met
Classical Voice North America: Bounty and diversity mirrored in swell of productions
The New Yorker: ‘Dead Man Walking’ at Sing Sing
Associated Press: Prejean’s 'Dead Man Walking' arrives at the Met
Agence France-Presse: An emotional look at death row
SF Chronicle: Heggie braces for a whirlwind season
The New York Times: ‘Dead Man Walking’ comes to the Met
Associated Press: Met Opera devotes a third of its productions to recent work
Financial Times: Composer Jake Heggie on his death row opera
The New York Times: Classical music and opera this fall
Opera News: Earned moment
Commonweal Magazine: This is our opera
Opera Magazine: Composing America
The New York Times: The Met’s new season: what we want to see
Critical Acclaim
“Jake Heggie’s soaring music is easily digested, and the storytelling of Terrence McNally’s libretto is crystal clear; its emotions are passionate. There is steady, swelling tenderness, for which Heggie’s cloudless lyricism is apt. He’s invented a sweet hymn that becomes Sister Helen’s leitmotif. For a sweeping ensemble bringing her together with Joseph’s mother and the parents of the victims, he turns to clean neo-Baroque chords, richly arranged, to balance emotion and clarity. He gives voices ample room to take flight.”
The New York Times
“Dead Man Walking is a special work. The opening overture, with its flowing line, is full of tension and foreboding. Then there’s the simple beauty of “He will gather us around.” And most prominently, the gorgeous ensemble “You don’t know” when parents confront Sister Helen about losing their children. The melodic development of that piece is gut-wrenching and simply beautiful. It connects and stays with you [and is] the musical high point of Dead Man Walking. Heggie’s vocal writing is brilliant in how simple but varied it is. Nothing has ever sounded so unforgettable at the Met than the silence that accompanied [the final] scene. Not one note. The silence was deafening – uncomfortably but also viscerally.”
OperaWire
“Gut-wrenching tale of rage and redemption, Heggie’s score has no thorns. Familiar American musical forms – jazz, gospel, rock – are melded to form a type of cinematic overview; it draws in the audience.”
Bachtrack
“Heggie’s score supported the drama without calling attention to itself. While he was right to say there were opera-size emotions in Sister Helen’s dive from a prisoner’s pen pal to the depths of the death-penalty machine, the composer mostly bypassed showy coloratura in favor of knotty inner feelings.”
New York Classical Review
“Heggie’s score is a blend of gospel, jazz with nods to gritty 20th century opera. It is absorbing, accessible in its reverence of melody and electrically fast-moving. Masterfully led by Nézet-Séguin, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra drove the score with immense verve.”
Opera Now
”A riveting performance with the Met orchestra, and the composer was greeted with open arms.”
Broadway World
“A magnificently crafted text, powerful music, performers vocally at the top of the industry – everything contributes to making this performance a “punching” show that literally nails the spectator to his seat. The score, which gives particular importance to strings and winds, fits perfectly with the drama. Heggie alternates moments of incredible violence when he depicts the murders in particular, and melodious passages, such as the hymn sung by Sister Helen “He will gather us around” which becomes her leitmotif throughout the opera until the final scene where she whispers it to the dying Rocher. We also hear reminiscences of gospel, even jazz. Each of the main characters has at least one monologue. The ensemble which concludes the first act is particularly impressive.”
Forum Opéra
“Even Heggie’s music — a roiling and often thrilling concoction of Britten-esque strings and Gershwin-esque winds — leaves little room for daylight. Attempts by the audience to applaud several arias were thwarted by Heggie’s relentless score, insistently ushering us toward De Rocher’s fate and allowing zero opportunities for the illusion to loosen. Heggie’s music rushes between evocations of the cold, mechanistic bureaucracy of capital punishment and the internal anxiety and turmoil of its protagonists.”
The Washington Post
“The accessible elegance of the music and the insistence of the dramatic questions it underscores are two of the reasons Dead Man Walking has become one of the most-produced modern operas since its world premiere in 2000.”
Theater Mania
“Heggie’s score triumphed in the end. Clear musical ideas, with a score that references popular styles without losing its own identity and strong vocal writing, a balanced and well-paced story and a timely set of ethical questions that deal deftly in ambivalence.”
The Observer
“To witness the way this gift [for vocal writing] has been present in Heggie’s work from the very beginning, a listener only had to witness the extraordinary production of his maiden effort, “Dead Man Walking,” that opened the season for New York’s Metropolitan Opera. This rich moral meditation on guilt, redemption and the barbarity of the death penalty has gone on to become the most widely produced opera of the 21st century. The Met production was beamed into movie theaters worldwide as part of the company’s “Live in HD” simulcast series, and is scheduled for an encore showing. It’s not to be missed. In addition to its immediate rewards, the “Dead Man” simulcast served as yet another reminder of how capaciously and broadly opera can reach — how many new subjects it can tackle, how many hearts and minds it can touch. It’s a lesson that American opera companies, embracing repertoire beyond the tried and true, have finally begun taking to heart.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“The music is lyrical, with a throb that suits the subject and also a yearning and wistfulness that bring out great feeling.”
Financial Times
“Heggie's music is a kind of sample of Western, and especially American, music and provides a sense of recognition and comfort in an otherwise emotionally unpleasant and heartbreaking experience. The music is original and characteristic of Heggie. Broadway and opera sometimes come together and in the most intimate scenes, Heggie's opera is as moving and theatrical as the best of Puccini. There is a kind of underscore like in a feature film and there is music from the car radio and even Elvis Presley passes by. American music in all its forms. There are only a few isolated scenes that resemble arias, such as 'This journey' by Helen and the heartbreaking 'Don't say word' by Mrs Patrick De Roucher – the great scenes of Helen can make the comparison with the greatest monologues in the operas of Wagner or Strauss.”
Place de l’Opera
“The production demonstrates that the work is unquestionably Met-worthy: a grand opera in a grand space. Yannick brought out Heggie’s gift for creating expressive, emotionally charged vocal lines. The curtain calls were exhilarating – Heggie received a hero’s welcome.”
Musical America
“Heggie's music transports us to the geographical and cultural center of the United States, with its enormous distances and religion as a cohesive and identifying element of a diverse and dispersed population. Heggie is not afraid of voices, he allows the singing to take flight, and develops moments of lyrical beauty, with notable numbers such as ‘This journey,’ the central aria of the protagonist, or the devastating sextet ‘You don't know what it's like,’ so simple in its musical structure as well as dramatically effective. It is music without intellectualizing pretensions, at the service of drama, as brilliant as it is stark, very operatic, which has made Dead Man Walking one of the most performed titles in contemporary American opera.”
Opera World (Spanish)
“It’s a powerful piece of theatre, and on the basis of the shocked silence that lingered after the final scene, an audience hit. Heggie writes soaring vocal lines that flatter the voice and has an undeniable skill with orchestration in the American symphonic tradition.”
Parterre Box
“Dead Man Walking makes the most concentrated impact of any piece of American music theater since West Side Story more than 40 years ago. San Francisco has a historic achievement on its hands. Although Heggie’s opera is universal in its themes and moral scope, it is also aesthetically and culturally a distinctively American opera. By any conceivable standards, Dead Man Walking is a big opera emotionally. That’s part of what one instantly respects about it. Heggie is an unabashed melodist. His music is rich and emotionally charged, and carries enormous atmospheric power. The orchestral writing is full of interest and subtlety. Heggie shows astonishing maturity for someone writing his first large-scale dramatic work. There is a sweep to this work which can only be called inspired. Heggie’s achievement is simply immense.”
The Guardian
“There are virtually no dead spots in this fluidly constructed, surefooted, consistently lyrical score. Heggie’s strongest suit is his ability to find exactly the right musical contour for a line of text, penetrating to the heart of the emotional situation with expressive vocal writing that never fails to illuminate the characters. Everyone onstage has his or her distinct musical life, the dramatic pacing is impeccable, and the emotional climaxes arrive precisely on time. No wonder opera companies are lining up to stage the piece…. compelling characters in a powerful theatrical situation, along with an accessible score by a skillful composer who knows how to press all the right buttons.”
New York Magazine
”The powerful hold Dead Man Walking exerted on its opening-night audience foreshadows a watershed moment in contemporary American opera. Heggie’s music provides a remarkably cohesive vision. The quiet but worrying thread that begins the score also contains the key to his musical strategy. Its repetitive fretting generates a tension and restlessness that won’t relent until the opera’s chilling conclusion. Yet, he’s able to jump-cut effectively between extremes, from a folk-like kernel of gospel-flavored melody to brutal, acid-splashing chords that make West Side Story sound tame.”
USA Today
“The maiden effort of composer Jake Heggie and librettist Terrence McNally, must be reckoned something of a masterpiece — a gripping, enormously skillful marriage of words and music to tell a story of love, suffering and spiritual redemption. An evening unprecedented here for musical allure and theatrical savvy. McNally’s splendid libretto — by turns plainspoken and eloquent, with wonderful splashes of wry humor to lighten the tone when it most needs it — creates the structural backbone of this wrenching drama. But it is Heggie’s expansive, humane and seamlessly ingratiating score that gives the work flesh and substance. In one scene after another, the music lets us feel and understand things deeply that the libretto can only hint at — and what else is opera about? The most remarkable aspect of the Dead Man score [is] how unerringly [Heggie] connects individual moments into a single consistent and expressive sound world … And all of these elements are fused into a score marked by gorgeous flights of lyrical breadth, punchy rhythmic byplay and orchestration that is full of surprises and idiosyncratic choices.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“The most compelling piece of musical theater I encountered this season was Jake Heggie’s and Terrence McNally’s Dead Man Walking, which sold out most of nine performances in San Francisco — two more than were originally scheduled… There seemed no doubt about its merit among most of the 30,000 people who attended. Audiences sat riveted in silence through the three-hour performance, then erupted into extended ovations after the final scene. Audiences were irresistibly drawn into the complex plight and progress of Sister Helen Prejean. Since its unprecedented success in San Francisco, eight other companies, including three majors, have expressed interest in staging Dead Man Walking. …I regard Dead Man Walking as one of the triumphs of the retiring general director.”
Wall Street Journal
”Dead Man Walking is, to its core, a crowd pleaser... Three hours after the curtain was raised, the crowd roared its approval in a substantial standing ovation. Heggie’s instinct is to flatter the voice, and he does so unfailingly. He sets words so well that we could have easily done without the projected titles. He also has the kind of feeling for the moment in theater that cannot be learned. One reason this opera held the crowd so well (and I can’t remember a time when I’ve heard fewer coughs in an American opera house) was that this was a compelling story simply told. New operas may not be as plentiful as they once were, but a time traveler from early 17th century Italy to the War Memorial Opera House, for the premiere of Dead Man Walking, couldn’t help but be impressed by the appearance of a thriving art form.”
Los Angeles Times
“In the United States, a successful new opera is a mythic beast: It seems plausible that such a thing might exist, but hardly anyone has ever laid eyes on one. Well, here’s a sighting: Dead Man Walking, Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s lyric thriller of redemption . . . It is the sort of opera that makes people who have experienced it want to do so again and those who haven’t wish they had.”
Newsday
“Dead Man Walking is the most compelling new American opera in decades, and it’s easy to see why companies have rushed to stage it. Heggie’s music is lush and the story gripping. There are influences of Gershwin and Britten in the music, which comes together with greater dramatic success than many other new works . . . What makes this work so impressive is that the immediate thought is to wonder how others would handle the roles. What kind of impact would Dolora Zajick have as Sister Helen? Or Lorraine Hunt Lieberson? Or Anne Sofie von Otter? There is much to look forward to.”
Associated Press
“A certifiable opera hit. Not only does this opera about a nontraditional subject break many of the rules of the genre, but it has done so without sacrificing appeal. This is opera as it was meant to be experienced… The real triumph here goes to McNally for his taught, flowing text, and especially to Heggie, a largely unknown talent, for crafting a score with no slack musical or dramatic spots, entirely tonal but still dangerous in appeal and eminently singable. An uproarious success with the opening-night audience.”
Houston Chronicle
“This is a piece which ought to be embraced by the operatic community at large: it possesses a gritty popular appeal and is full of powerful musical and dramatic momentum. Above all, and this is rare in contemporary opera, the world premiere production packed a devastating emotional punch — it was an accomplished piece of theater. It is to the great credit of librettist Terrence McNally and composer Jake Heggie that the opera never becomes a moral treatise on the rights and wrongs of the death penalty; nor does it sentimentalize or sensationalize its subject matter. Instead, Dead Man Walking engages its audience by exploring human motivations and frailties that are at work in a desperate situation — to love or to hate: that is the stark alternative proposed by the opera. McNally’s libretto is full of terse, tough-skinned vigor concealing a tender heart. Heggie’s music both inspires and colors the emotional force of the drama with its grainy orchestral writing and arching melodic lines which set the text beautifully for the singing voice. The combined power of words and music is a verismo tour de force that is not a million miles from Puccini. I can only hope that audiences around the world are given a chance to experience how powerful new opera, written and performed in a thoroughly modern idiom, can be.”
Opera Now
“From the start, the opera has an assured, confident feel, as if Heggie and McNally knew exactly what they wanted to do and did it … Heggie has composed a rich, unified score that never becomes overly schematic … his music has a gleaming sincerity and never overplays its hand. The orchestrations throughout are impressively crafted — Heggie’s use of winds and percussion is especially effective — and his ensemble writing is downright masterly. A stunning piece of work… It may be the first work I’ve seen that convinced me that opera and naturalism can coexist peacefully. That’s no small achievement, and it’s one of the many reasons that Dead Man Walking deserves a long life.”
Opera News
“Heggie may prove to be contemporary opera’s savior. Heggie’s rhythmic profile is powerful and his orchestration strong without covering the singers. The opera is particularly accomplished in its many ensemble pieces. If the jailhouse chorus and the big, concerted finale sounded like the Benjamin Britten of Billy Budd and the War Requiem, those are sound models and Heggie’s part writing remains original.”
Chigao Tribune
”Musically, Heggie’s Dead Man Walking is an impressive piece of work, especially given that it’s the composer’s first opera, that he is only 39, that he has worked mostly in smaller forms and that his subject matter presented almost insurmountable challenges. Musically, it is tonal but distinctive, strongest in its passages of muted anxiety and tenderness. The composer, best known for his songs, produces elegant musical pastiches (including two pop songs and a gospel tune) and he has passed the first test of a song composer working in opera: He has managed to work on a large scale, with a psychologically compelling mix of motivic economy and invention. He has a very good ear for a wide range of tonal possibilities, with passing stylistic references that suggest familiarity with earlier operas that live in the same claustrophobic world of fear and death.”
Washington Post
”A triumph. Heggie gives the story a handsome musical framework, with a sure sense of dramatic pacing, attractive writing for the orchestra, and a beautifully tonal vocal style that makes every voice sound golden. Heggie’s music incorporates bits of jazz, rockabilly and gospel, yet still manages to sound all of a piece. It’s the composer’s first full-length opera, and he creates a cohesive score with an impressively varied orchestral palette. This is opera with a powerful emotional heart, telling a story for our times.”
Contra Costa Times
”Appeals directly to the heart … Heggie’s bittersweet music puts him in the line of American opera composers such as Menotti and Barber, which will not delight hardline critics, but he knows how to tell a story, how to hold the audience’s interest and rouse its emotions. There should be a far greater number of new operas filling our theaters and Heggie looks well placed to add to them.”
Financial Times
“From the plaintive orchestral murmurings that introduce the opera’s harrowing first scene, to the profoundly moving ending, there’s no doubt that this is an opera by a composer of great musical heart.”
Boston Herald
”So many people have done so many things right it’s hard to know where to start the praise. McNally’s libretto … is one of his finest achievements in a long career in the theater. Heggie’s score serves the story with utter fidelity at every turn, in many different ways that are among a good composer’s powers.”
Sacramento Bee