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Mar. 13--The death penalty, like war, is easier to support in the abstract, when someone else is doing the actual dirty work, the switch-pulling, the injection, the shooting - and in a place out of view, out of earshot, far removed from our safe, comfortable world.
Perhaps the best thing about Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, which is receiving an exceptionally strong production by the Baltimore Opera Company, is how quickly and irrevocably it pulls audiences into an issue and a reality that usually get no closer to us than a newspaper headline or a snippet of film at 11.
Based on Sister Helen Prejean's influential book, the opera doesn't flinch from the naked or the dead, the sacred or the profane, the horrid or the mundane. It's a remarkably honest work, one reason it has been known to confirm the convictions of both pro- and anti-death penalty factions since its sensational premiere in San Francisco six years ago.
With Heggie's accessible, vivid score and a mostly fine-tuned libretto by multi-Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally, Dead Man Walking takes us right into this nun's innermost thoughts, the progress from gut-reaction to soul-searching.
We also get pretty close to the inner workings of a disgusting killer. He's called Joseph De Rocher, but he could be almost anyone who ever slaughtered a human being. The opera compels us to think of him as a human being, too.
Baltimore Opera's presentation of Dead Man Walking finds the company operating at peak strength. The uniformly impressive cast includes the originator of De Rocher, John Packard; the work's original conductor, Patrick Summers, is also on hand, exerting an obvious authority. The staging, a co-production with six other American companies, provides a good deal of atmosphere in economical fashion.
On Saturday night at the Lyric Opera House, Packard's sturdy baritone and uncanny way of physically inhabiting the role made De Rocher a compelling presence. The slow melt of the murderer's unrepentant facade was masterfully achieved.
As Sister Helen, Theodora Hanslowe was equally impressive at creating a three-dimensional figure, with acting as astute and incisive as her vocalism. Her mellow, penetrating mezzo and superb diction (the whole cast articulated admirably, but surtitles were used nonetheless) tapped deeply into the opera's rich lyrical vein. Only her final solo, an a cappella version of the opera's recurring hymn, disappointed. The pace was a little too fast, the style a little too edgy to give this poetic coda its full poignancy.
Diana Soviero, the wonderful soprano best known for her idiomatic performances in the Italian repertoire, nearly stole the night with her gripping portrayal of Mrs. De Rocher, who gets some of Heggie's most inspired and moving music. Her almost Anna Magnani-like intensity laid bare the pain of a mother who thinks she has failed her child. Even allowing for some technical roughness in the voice, this was great singing - and great theater.
As Sister Rose, Kishna Davis heated up the place with her gleaming soprano and natural, animated phrasing. As the parents of the teenagers whose murder launches the opera, Phyllis Burg, Suzanne S. Chadwick, John Weber and, especially, Kelly Anderson offered dynamic voices and effective characterizations. Other sturdy contributions came from Patrick Toomey as the chaplain and David Langan as the warden.
Summers coaxed some of the most attentive and fully alive playing I've heard from the Baltimore Opera orchestra, adding to the impact of a performance attended by Heggie and the real Sister Helen Prejean (the two shared in the onstage bows before the sizable, enthusiastic audience.)
Director Christopher Thomas had the action progressing with cinematic fluidity. It did look odd, though, for Sister Helen to stand during most of her driving-to-the-penitentiary scene. And the tension of the lethal-injection scene seemed oddly diluted; a nurse took too long affixing the tubes, while the sight of cast members assembled close to the gurney proved more distracting than symbolically meaningful.
A few mechanical glitches should be cleaned up for the remaining performances. (The worst on Saturday was a sudden burst of amplification during the execution scene.)
Other things about the opera cannot be changed. The passages in the score that have all the obviousness and predictability of the soundtrack to a murder mystery show on TV, for example. The way the music slips into a kind of musical saccharine when Sister Helen tells De Rocher that "the truth will set you free." The rather cheesy Elvis Presley stuff in the scene when De Rocher and Sister Helen recall the King. Or the ordinariness of Heggie's hymn tune, which is such a key element in the opera's musical structure; I wish it had the emotional pull of a vintage spiritual.
That said, the best in this opera is very substantial, especially the sextet, which works as effectively as any ensemble scene in grand operas of the past. And the way Heggie has De Rocher enter for the first time without a drop of melodramatic harmony or thundering percussion is just right.
Above all, the composer's use of motives is skillful and telling, starting with the twisty, portentous opening one that makes many a subtly altered guise as it helps propel the characters on their individual journeys of self-discovery and redemption.
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Baltimore Sun
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