Near where Freeze Frame Opera performs Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, gallows stand.  Such a site-specific staging, in Fremantle Prison’s historic East Workshops, achieves even greater power and resonance when the production’s director Adam Mitchell in his program note reminds us of the deaths in custody of First Nations peoples.  And when one learns of a 2023 production at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, where Metropolitan Opera artists performed alongside incarcerated men from the prison’s music program for an audience comprising around 150 inmates . Based on Sister Helen Prejean’s memoir, Heggie and Terrence McNally’s opera premiered at San Francisco Opera in 2000 and has since become one of the most-performed contemporary operas in our time, boasting over 80 productions worldwide. Yet it’s fair to say it has rarely been performed in a space so eloquent of prisoners having once toiled in the hope of rehabilitation under the shadow of institutional death. A Catholic nun, Sister Helen becomes spiritual advisor to death row inmate Joseph de Rocher, who has been convicted of murdering a teenage couple.  As the prisoner’s execution looms, Sister Helen is torn between her compassion… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a … Continue reading Dead Man Walking (Freeze Frame Opera)