Dead Man Walking: Walking with Sister Helen

Opera Now
November 2025

Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking has become the most-performed new opera of the 21st century. On the 25th anniversary of its premiere, Opera Now speaks to the interpreters of Sister Helen Prejean about the transformative power of inhabiting her story.

Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally's first opera together, Dead Man Walking, premiered at San Francisco Opera on October 7, 2000. Based on Sister Helen Prejean's 1993 memoir about how she became a death penalty activist, it became the most-performed new opera of the 21st century, with more than 80 productions to date. The opera opens with a violent crime and closes with the execution of Joseph De Rocher, one of the criminals. And there's Sister Helen herself, a plainspoken Roman Catholic nun whose strength of character and beliefs led her to become a spiritual advisor to death row inmates and an activist opponent of the death penalty.

Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, who sang the role in San Francisco's revival, concurs with Susan Graham, noting the secrecy surrounding executions in the United States.

"The family very often can't even be there. I walked into this assuming that if somebody's on death row, they probably deserve to be there. In my walk with all of this, I unlearned a lot of things that I think, in so many ways, the criminal justice system is very happy to let people assume. 'I'm grateful to this piece for challenging me to ask, "Okay, where do I really sit? How do I feel about this thing that both affects and ends lives?" And as it turns out, religion or no, I agree with Sister Helen.' She muses about how the opera affects performers and the audience. "This piece actually makes people think. It doesn't tell you what to think. But it requires you to think. It's art that matters.'

Read the full feature at Opera Now!