DEAD MAN WALKING

Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads cast starring mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato as Sister Helen Prejean and bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as death-row inmate Joseph De Rocher.

The Met launched its 2023–24 season with the company premiere of the most performed new work of the last two decades: Jake Heggie’s DEAD MAN WALKING. Based on the harrowing memoir by Sister Helen Prejean - which also inspired an Oscar-winning 1995 film - the opera follows Prejean as she ministers to a condemned man on death row. In this performance from the Met’s Live in HD series, acclaimed mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato delivers a wrenching portrayal as Sister Helen, starring alongside bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as Joseph De Rocher, who discovers that all of God’s children are worthy of redemption regardless of their crimes. Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium to lead an austere yet utterly heartbreaking production by director Ivo van Hove.

“Wild applause and standing ovations... DEAD MAN WALKING makes its arresting Met debut… The finest and most engaged work I’ve ever seen or heard from Joyce DiDonato… Ryan McKinny sang the role of De Rocher with figurative and literal muscular force.” - The Washington Post

“Death-row drama brings audience to tears… DiDonato is lustrous… Susan Graham is deeply moving.” - Financial Times