Composer Jake Heggie didn't set out to write an opera about the death penalty. He really hadn't given the issue much thought when he agreed to librettist Terrence McNally's proposal to write an opera based on Sister Helen Prejean's memoir, "Dead Man Walking."

"I just saw it as a great story," he says.

Commissioned by the San Francisco Opera and premiered in 2000, "Dead Man Walking" has been unusually successful for a contemporary opera. Heggie estimates that it's been given 30 times, with 150 to 160 performances, "which for opera isn't bad."

It's proved popular in Europe as well as in North America. Dresden, Heggie says, "has revived it four or five times. I'm really surprised and pleased."

The opera, set in Louisiana, opens with a prologue that shows protagonist Joseph De Rocher and his brother attacking a teenage couple, raping her and killing them both. The rest of the opera deals with Prejean's choices to first become De Rocher's pen pal and then his spiritual adviser, garnering the criticism of her sisters, prison officials and the victims' parents. Prejean persists, however, and her unfailing offerings of God's love finally get through to him; De Rocher confesses and asks forgiveness before he is executed.

The idea of turning Prejean's book into an opera was McNally's idea , Heggie says.

"We were looking for a subject for an opera," Heggie says. "He wanted to do something with great resonance."

"Dead Man Walking" qualifies because "it has all the elements of great tragedy: a matter of life and death, something at stake in every scene, every character has a journey to go through," Heggie says. "It's one great journey. When (McNally told) me, every hair on my head stood up."

From the composer's point of view, "I could see opportunities for ensembles, I could see opportunities for choruses, I could see an opportunity for the music to tell the story in a transcendent way that would go beyond what words could do. I was very excited by it."

The opera is not simply a retelling of the book, or the 1995 movie, set to music. It's a discrete work. The names of those involved, except for Prejean's, have been changed to give McNally more room to work and tell a story crafted for the stage. Some characters are composites, others are invented — as are incidents in Prejean's life.

As for Prejean, "when we got permission to do it, she said, 'I know you have to change things. The only thing I ask is that it remains a story of redemption.' She's an amazing person," Heggie says.

Prejean was a little worried about the music, though.

"I don't even think she'd ever been to an opera," Heggie says. "When she called me first, she said, 'Jake, this is Sister Helen Prejean. They called me and said, "This is the San Francisco Opera, and we want to make an opera out of 'Dead Man Walking.'" And I said, 'Will it have tunes?' She was very worried that I was some sort of rigid academic composer. I assured her, no, I'm a theater guy, and I write music for the stage."

With that concern satisfied, Prejean told Heggie, "You need complete freedom to do what you need to do." Still, he kept her posted as the score was composed, sending her tapes of him playing sections.

Heggie doesn't know whether Prejean has been to any other operas — "I keep running into her at this one."

Prejean will attend Union Avenue Opera's opening night, on Friday, and will speak at Union Avenue Christian Church at 8 p.m. Thursday, with a book signing to follow. (Heggie will be in Australia for a new production of his opera "Moby Dick.")

"Dead Man Walking" was Heggie's first opera, and it wasn't easy to compose. Although he'd written songs and song cycles, all with a theatrical bent, he found it emotionally draining because of the subject matter.

"I took breaks, to write lighter music," he says.

But some parts really flowed. A scene with the parents of the murdered teens was written start to finish in just two hours.

"The buildup was 38 years of my life," he says. "It took 38 years and two hours to do."

He credits McNally with giving him confidence and freedom in his composition.

"Really fine librettists in the opera world are very, very rare, but they're taken for granted," Heggie says. "I always cringe when I hear, 'Jake Heggie's "Dead Man Walking.'" I don't do this alone. I had great words" to work with.

Before the opera, Heggie was ambivalent about the death penalty, but no more.

"After spending three years of my life (on the opera), it just seems wrong," he says. "It creates more problems than it solves."

The opera should not, however, be mistaken for a polemic.

"I'm very proud of it, because we tried very hard to find a balanced perspective between people who want the guy to die and people who don't think he should," Heggie says. "It was very important not to preach in the opera. I don't like to be preached at in the theater. We honored the integrity of each of those characters. We honored their perspectives.

"All we do is bring people into the story and let them make up their own minds about it. It tells a story, but it stirs up an emotional response in people that makes them somehow transformed."

 

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What 'Dead Man Walking' • When 8 p.m. Friday and Aug. 20, 26, 27 • Where Union Avenue Christian Church, 733 Union Boulevard • How much $30 to $52 • More info unionavenueopera.org or 314-361-2881