Premieres Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 2 p.m. on KPBS TV / PBS App
American composer Jake Heggie's masterpiece, the most widely performed new opera of the last 20 years, has its highly anticipated Met premiere, in a haunting new production by Ivo van Hove.
Based on Sister Helen Prejea's memoir about her fight for the soul of a condemned murderer, "Dead Man Walking" matches the high drama of its subject with Heggie's beautiful and poignant music and a brilliant libretto by Terrence McNally.
Met Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin takes the podium for this landmark premiere, with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato starring as Sister Helen. The outstanding cast also features bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as the death-row inmate Joseph De Rocher, soprano Latonia Moore as Sister Rose, and legendary mezzo-soprano Susan Graham who sang Helen Prejean in the opera's 2000 premiere as De Rocher's mother.
![Joyce DiDonato as Sister Helen Prejean and Ryan McKinny as Joseph De Rocher in Jake Heggie's "Dead Man Walking."](https://cdn.kpbs.org/dims4/default/a792194/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1900x1170+0+0/resize/880x542!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fkpbs-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fd6%2F09%2Ffaeaded1428c8f81a89b4687ad3a%2Fdmw-7773-c-scaled.jpg)
Credits: Produced by the Metropolitan Opera in association with PBS and The WNET Group, bringing the best of the Metropolitan Opera into the homes of opera fans across the country.
![Ryan McKinny as Joseph De Rocher, Joyce DiDonato as Sister Helen Prejean, and Raymond Aceto as Warden George Benton in Jake Heggie's "Dead Man Walking."](https://cdn.kpbs.org/dims4/default/b77ba05/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1900x1170+0+0/resize/880x542!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fkpbs-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F9d%2Fdb%2F470d4bd94838be04530782fb61cf%2Fdmw-4350-c-scaled.jpg)