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John Packard in the Opera Pacific production of
Dead Man Walking.
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The last time a large crowd of activists gathered outside Music Hall, it was to protest a November 2000 Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) concert attended by international delegates to the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue conference.
Demonstrations against the globalization of market economies were held across the street in Washington Park. A vacant 12th Street storefront became the temporary headquarters for visiting activist groups.
For a few days, the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood around Music Hall -- Cincinnati's venerable performing arts center, home to the CSO, Cincinnati Pops, Cincinnati Opera and May Festival -- was a hotbed of political activity.
Six months later, a series of riots broke out throughout Over-the-Rhine in protest of an unarmed African-American teen-ager being shot by Cincinnati Police. Since then, Music Hall has returned to its reserved status quo of Classical music and polite audiences.
Activist politics and high art reunite there next week, however, at the Cincinnati Opera's opening of Dead Man Walking. This time, there will be no barricades and no riot gear.
Dead Man Walking, a new work by American composer Jake Heggie, is based on Sister Helen Prejean's 1993 book. The opera tells the story of Sister Helen, a Louisiana nun who becomes the spiritual advisor to Death Row inmate Joseph De Rocher.
Over time, the two develop a strong friendship. Together, they fight to overturn his death sentence through hope and compassion.
Music Hall audiences who have seen the 1995 film adaptation of Dead Man Walking, starring Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen and Sean Penn as the Death Row inmate she befriends, will be familiar with the storyline. Still, the opera adaptation, which premiered in San Francisco in October 2000, is bound to startle those accustomed to tried-and-true productions of classics like Madame Butterfly and The Marriage of Figaro.
I've yet to see Dead Man Walking onstage, but I've become familiar with its music through its CD recording. Heggie's score is tuneful, embracing Broadway melodies and bluesy riffs. What audiences will hear is totally approachable. What they'll see is an entirely different matter.
Dead Man Walking is stark, somber and edgy. The cells of Louisiana's Angola Prison are re-created by a large metal lattice. The story's climax takes place in the prison's death chamber, focusing on the gurney that holds De Rocher. The image promises to be riveting and heartwrenching.
During the opera's run, local activists are planning to greet Music Hall audiences with anti-capital punishment leaflets. Volunteers from Justice Watch, a West End-based political group, and Over-the-Rhine's Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center will man an information booth.
These activists will tell Dead Man Walking audiences about the 203 men awaiting execution on Ohio's Death Row, 50 of whom are mentally retarded. They'll talk about the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that considers executions of the mentally retarded as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. They'll remind people that Ohio's fifth execution in three years is scheduled for Aug. 27. They'll call on audience members to contact Gov. Bob Taft and Ohio legislators to demand a moratorium on capital punishment.
Before they even enter the hall, Dead Man Walking audiences will be asked to contemplate what they're about to see.
"We're really excited about Dead Man Walking," says Mike Shryock, a volunteer with the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center. "We hope the performances raise awareness about capital punishment. Most people think that capital punishment deters crime. Most people think only the worst people get sent to Death Row. Hopefully, Dead Man Walking will raise people's awareness about the human side of it."
Shryock says an opera production about the subject likely will teach as much as -- if not more than -- any flyer or leaflet.
"Through the arts, we can communicate to a different piece of a person's soul," he says. "Music and visuals and the story show the option of healing and reconciliation and forgiveness."
Operas, contemporary or otherwise, don't come any more topical than Dead Man Walking. What Heggie and librettist Terrence McNally have created is hot-button art.
The opera enjoyed critical acclaim and box-office success upon its San Francisco debut. Seven opera companies, including Cincinnati and Opera Pacific, quickly formed a partnership to produce a traveling production of Dead Man Walking.
One wonders if the story's contemporary themes will discourage opera companies from staging it 10, 20 or 50 years from now. Still, Cincinnati Opera has its own set of future concerns.
Despite its advance acclaim, Dead Man Walking is the most challenging offering of the company's 2002 season. Basically, when it comes to filling seats, it's a tough sell.
For the past few years under Artistic Director Nicholas Muni, Cincinnati Opera has been committed to presenting challenging work. The reality is that audience response to Dead Man Walking will help determine just how edgy the company is willing to be in future seasons.
Risky Business
These are good times for Cincinnati Opera, which enjoys a rich history as the country's oldest continuously operating opera company. Its 2002 summer festival is its 30th season at Music Hall; before that, its summer seasons were presented for 51 years at Cincinnati Zoo.
Like many American opera companies, Cincinnati Opera is attracting larger and younger audiences. It's also looking to capitalize on that box-office success.
In 1998, the company made major acoustical and sight-line improvements to Music Hall. Earlier this year, it announced a $3.3 million plan to renovate the hall's north wing into the Corbett Opera Center, where, for the first time, its offices, rehearsal spaces and support staff will be housed in a central location.
One of the reasons for the facilities improvements is to support a 10-year master plan to turn Cincinnati Opera's four-production summer season into an expanded repertory festival performed at multiple venues. Staging newer and risky operas regularly is also part of the plan.
A lot of the credit for these changes goes to Muni, who arrived in 1996 and immediately made challenging programming part of the seasonal repertoire. There was an avant-garde production of Jenufa in 1998, Benjamin Britten's modern The Turn of the Screw in 1999 and Debussy's stark Péleas et Mélisande in 2000.
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Sister Helen Prejean confers with Susan Sarandon
and Tim Robbins during the making of the 1995 film
Dead Man Walking.
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Last year, Canadian director Robert Lepage's edgy pairing of Bela Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle and Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung proved to be the summer season's artistic highlight.
Cincinnati Opera continues to stage audience favorites, like this season's productions of Romeo and Juliet and The Marriage of Figaro. Still, the more avant-garde productions are what receive the lion's share of the company's external and internal spotlight.
At a recent luncheon held to thank corporate donors, Cincinnati Opera Executive Director Patty Beggs reported that the company received a 17-percent increase in corporate gifts over the previous year. Despite an economic recession, the financial commitment from local businesses remains strong.
Still, Beggs and Muni have to wonder if Dead Man Walking will alienate the more traditional members of their audience.
With a sizable investment, the Midwest premiere of Dead Man Walking looks to be Cincinnati Opera's greatest risk. Their attendance goal for the three shows (July 11, 13 and 19) is 8,500. While season subscribers are at 63 percent, down from 70 percent in 2001, attendance at this season's first two productions remains strong.
Sister Act
In town to promote a public lecture in support of Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean talks in one of many distant back rooms at Music Hall. It's a warm April afternoon, but you wouldn't know that from the windowless space, as sickly fluorescent light fills the room.
Sitting down to talk, you can't help but feel that the room's cinderblock walls resemble a cell. For Sister Helen, who's busy explaining how her story and book became adapted into the opera, the room's bleak setting feels appropriate. It provides a solemn setting that matches perfectly her somber facts about capital punishment.
"My book says that it's an eyewitness account of the death penalty in the United States," Sister Helen says, speaking with a lively Southern twang. "But I had to bring people on the journey. If people felt I was just going to slam the death penalty, they wouldn't read it. You got to lure people in by saying, 'I'm going to give you an honest journey. Come with me.' "
Sister Helen doesn't consider herself an artist, although she's written a popular book. She's an activist, she says, and her life mission centers on overturning the death penalty state by state. This opera is the latest tool in her public awareness arsenal.
Sister Helen is a dynamic woman despite her small size. She makes every inch of her petite frame matter.
More importantly, there's strength in her voice. Her Southern drawl is deceiving, as she's anything but a carefree Southern belle.
Sister Helen is a woman who means business and who won't cease in her goal of abolishing capital punishment.
"What does society do when someone has done an unspeakable crime against the innocent?" she asks. "Are we justified in killing them? That is the heart of the heart of the question. And then when you ask, how do we apply it? That's the place where we are now."
Sound and Vision
It's a few weeks after Sister Helen's visit, and Heggie, Dead Man Walking's composer, has come to Cincinnati for his turn at promoting the opera's upcoming performances. The First Watch restaurant is crowded with runners from a morning marathon, and Heggie is fit and alert enough to look like he just crossed the finish line.
Heggie is the type of well-scrubbed man who looks like he never spent a day in jail. Still, that didn't stop him from creating music that captures the somber mood of Death Row and Sister Helen's journey.
"Opera didn't work for me when I was a student in college because I just listened to the music in classrooms," he says. "It took me going to the theater and experiencing it live to get it. I learned that what makes opera successful is when the music transforms the text and the story."
Heggie says audiences used to traditional opera might be a little put off by the current-day setting and issues in Dead Man Walking, so he included snippets of non-traditional opera music to make audiences feel more at ease.
"In telling a contemporary story like this, the visuals are so important because these are people just like you and me," he says. "They're not in big gowns and wigs. They're dressed in clothes from K-Mart and Target. They're feeling things and talking about things that are contemporary to us. That's why I mixed up the music that I wrote. In the first act, you hear an orchestral prelude, a Rock & Roll song, a Southern gothic-like hymn and a Gospel song. All these different songs help tell us who we are as a people."
Heggie was employed in San Francisco Opera's publicity department before he received the commission to compose Dead Man Walking. He'd written songs before, but nothing on this large of a scale.
Asked if he knew his opera would be a hit, Heggie smiles and pleads ignorance. He's having the experience of his life by watching it travel to new audiences.
"Composing an opera is like having a little child," he says, laughing. "You worry about how it's going to do in the world out there when you put on its first suit of clothes. If the singers are right and they understand you, you feel your best. But once the first note starts, it's beyond your control. So you sit back and you hope it does OK.
"I know (Dead Man Walking) worked for me and I know the singers were enthusiastic. But I didn't know if audiences felt like it would make them deal with the death penalty. I do think audiences were really surprised by how emotional it all was."
There are other progressive operas being staged this summer across North America. Mary Zimmerman directs the Philip Glass opera Galileo Galilei at Chicago's Goodman Theater. Cary John Franklin's Loss of Eden, about the Lindbergh kidnapping, is at Opera Theater of Saint Louis.
Still, none of them are receiving the level of immediate acclaim surrounding Dead Man Walking. In fact, the recent Supreme Court ruling regarding capital punishment has made it that rare opera whose subject is ripped from the headlines. Some critics have even credited Dead Man Walking for single-handedly reviving American operatic theater.
Leaning back in the restaurant booth, Heggie tries hard not to think about the future.
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John Packard as death row inmate Joseph De Rocher
in Dead Man Walking.
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"I only know the material I grew up with," he says. "I watched The Carol Burnett Show and Sonny and Cher with my family. My dad was a Jazz saxophone player and my sisters loved Rock & Roll. I wanted to draw on American sources that were comfortable to me for Dead Man Walking. I didn't want to draw on European models. It's unashamedly American. I know there are people who have a problem with that, but there are always people who will have a problem with something."
Behind the Curtain
While Cincinnati suffers through a July heat wave, rehearsals for Dead Man Walking continue apace at Summit Country Day's auditorium. Margaret Jane Wray, who plays Sister Helen Prejean, waits for rehearsals to begin and talks casually about her family. She's performed in front of May Festival audiences before but knows this will be a completely different experience.
Wray doesn't know what to expect from the audiences -- all she can promise them is a powerful musical performance. She understands the politics surrounding the opera but also believes her own political beliefs have nothing to do with her performance.
"I tell people that what I feel doesn't matter one way or the other," Wray says. "I'm playing a role. What I need to perform the role well does not involve my politics."
Nearby, John Packard, who plays Joseph de Rocher, sits in a small dressing room behind the auditorium stage. He's played de Rocher in previous productions in San Francisco and Costa Mesa, Calif., and says he can't separate the politics from his performance.
Packard traveled with a San Francisco TV crew to Angola to tour the prison's death chamber. He walked along Death Row. He even allowed Angola guards to put the shackles on his ankles.
"I remember that the guard had a hard time releasing the shackles," Packard says, smiling. "I can tell you that my face turned white and I started to tremble. They asked me if I wanted to be strapped to the gurney. I don't mind telling you I couldn't do it. I didn't have the courage to do it."
Packard says he shared his family's pro-death penalty sentiments before he starred in Dead Man Walking's San Francisco debut. Asked if art can make a political impact, Packard points to himself as an example.
"I'm involved in trying to stop the death penalty in my home state of Pennsylvania," he says. "I try to help with Sister Helen's campaign. My own beliefs have been changed by this role. I've sung a number of the classic operas, Madame Butterfly and The Barber of Seville, but this one impacts you personally."
In the days leading to Dead Man Walking's Cincinnati premiere, Packard and his cast prepare for a dress rehearsal. At the same time, anti-capital punishment activists ready themselves for a chance to take their message to people they ordinarily might never meet.
"I'm not saying that the majority of people who attend opera are Republicans and proponents of the death penalty," says Dianna Wentz, director of the Moratorium Campaign. "But they're not the typical supporters that we would find, say, at a Steve Earle concert. Dead Man Walking is a chance for us to reach a different voice, that person who might be supportive of the death penalty, and find some common ground with them."
On June 29, a letter from Sister Helen inviting Gov. Taft and Ohio legislators to come watch Dead Man Walking with her at Music Hall ran in The Columbus Dispatch. Other Ohio newspapers are expected to print the letter in their editorial sections.
Simply by watching the opera, Sister Helen says, she hopes to change minds. This adaptation has taught her how powerful the arts can be.
"I saw what the opera did in San Francisco," Sister Helen says. "You take an issue. You take all the deep conflicts of love and hate, life and death. They allow you to explore all the regions of the heart. It takes the audience over into both sides. It doesn't preach at them. Doesn't say, 'Here's a message.'
"Art does that. Art brings you into regions of the heart and experience. And what could be more powerful than drama and music together?" ©
DEAD MAN WALKING plays July 11, 13 and 19 at 8 p.m. at Music Hall.
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