The Metropolitan Opera opens its 2023–24 Live in HD season with Jake Heggie’s masterpiece Dead Man Walking on Saturday 21st October at 5.55pm BST—the first of three works from recent years to be presented live in cinemas this season. Based on Sister Helen Prejean’s memoir, which also inspired the 1995 Oscar-winning film, the story follows Sister Helen’s fight for the soul of a condemned murderer on death row. With a libretto by the late Tony and Emmy Award winner Terrence McNally, Dead Man Walking is the most widely performed new opera of the last two decades. Tickets are on sale now at selected cinemas across the UK at MetLiveInHD.co.uk.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, leads the star-studded cast, including Grammy Award–winning mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato as Sister Helen; bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as death-row inmate Joseph De Rocher; soprano Latonia Moore as Sister Rose; and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, who originated the role of Sister Helen in the opera’s 2000 premiere, as De Rocher’s mother.
Directed by Tony Award–winning director Ivo van Hove, Dead Man Walking’s creative team also includes set and lighting designer Jan Versweyveld, costume designer An D’Huys, projection designer Christopher Ash, and sound designer Tom Gibbons in his Met debut.
Gary Halvorson will direct the Live in HD presentation for cinemas, with Grammy Award–winning musician, MacArthur recipient, and Pulitzer Prize winner Rhiannon Giddens serving as host. She will provide exclusive behind-the-scenes access and lead interviews with the cast and creative team during the interval.
The broadcast will also include an interval feature filmed at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Led by Sister Helen and DiDonato and in association with Carnegie Hall’s Musical Connections program, members of the opera’s cast and music staff, together with some of the resident men at Sing Sing, rehearsed and presented an abridged concert version of Dead Man Walking at the correctional facility.
