Dead Man Walking resonates with devastating contemporary relevance. This is opera at its highest capacity: posing unanswerable questions, creating space for profound feeling, then releasing us—irrevocably touched, fundamentally altered, alone with reconfigured thoughts.
English National Opera | London Coliseum ★★★★★
I arrived at the Coliseum not having seen the film nor knowing much about Sister Helen Prejean's activism. This was a gift. Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally's Dead Man Walking struck me with unmediated force. First staged in 2000, Heggie's work has bypassed opera's typical decades-long probation period. ENO's production shows us why.
The narrative follows Sister Helen Prejean, a Louisiana nun who becomes spiritual adviser to a death row inmate, accompanying him to execution whilst navigating encounters with both the murdered teenagers' families and the condemned man's own kin. Her journey through America's capital punishment machinery transforms her into an activist—mirroring the real Sister Helen's emergence onto US national consciousness.
Christine Rice inhabits Sister Helen with extraordinary dignity—an island of serenity amid storms of rage and grief. Her celestial vocal quality renders each phrase like divine exhalation: immaculate, transient, perpetually insufficient. The occasional restraint in her powerful voice serves the character brilliantly; Sister Helen moves through moral darkness with forensic precision, her quiet insistence gradually reshaping those around her.
Michael Mayes's Joseph De Rocher is the production's anchor. Having sung this role repeatedly, Mayes excavates personal truth, lending raw humanity to a man deemed irredeemable. His portrayal resists easy categorisation—conflicted, visceral, terrifyingly recognisable. The charged exchanges between Rice and Mayes form the opera's gravitational centre, their confrontation operating on spiritual, emotional and corporeal planes simultaneously.
Dame Sarah Connolly's Mrs Patrick De Rocher devastates—a working-class mother ensnared by poverty, vilified as monster-maker, yet helpless before her son's approaching death. Her supplication for clemency shattered me. Every gesture articulating maternal anguish.
Madeline Boreham's Sister Rose provides essential counterbalance—her voice possessing luminous clarity, offering momentary transcendence amid gathering darkness.
The quartet of bereaved parents—Gweneth Ann Rand, Jacques Imbrailo, Catherine Carby and Hubert Francis—delivered shockingly vital performances. United in loss, they create a chorus of accusation demanding why Sister Helen's ministry excludes them. Her inadequate "I'm sorry" unleashes their crystalline pain, quietly excoriating her response and demanding retribution. The beauty lies precisely in this horror: aesthetic rendering of irreparable damage, revealing how violence against one metastasises through entire communities.
Conductor Kerem Hasan's synthesis of precision and empathy proves ideal for Heggie's luminous score. The ENO Orchestra and Chorus provide flawless musical foundation. Heggie's compositional strategy creates recursive loops wherein nothing remains simple—the repeated motif "Haven't we all suffered enough?" functions like a nail penetrating defences through sheer directness.
The simple set (Alex Eales), suggesting institutional American architecture bereft of humanity, changes props for gaol, school, convent, with the lighting (D.M. Wood) cleverly highlighting changes in space, and time.
Full list of cast and creatives here:
I anticipated a comfortable evening; instead found myself ambushed. It left me aghast, wide-eyed. The production's 18+ certification (sexual assault, murder, execution, religious crisis) was clear that comfort was never the objective.
Directory Annilese Miskimmon beats this terrible narrative drum with superb relentless tension. The gathering horror evokes Britten's Peter Grimes—the fearful mob reflecting our moral anxieties. Dead Man Walking excavates the darkest human caverns whilst discovering, miraculously, compassion's persistent flicker. The ENO Chorus functioned as embodied community, reminding us how violence corrodes social fabric.
The opera's 2025 production feels urgent. With cruelty normalised, viciousness elevated as virtue, compassionate institutions under assault, executions championed anew, empathy derided, and social media amplifying hate, Dead Man Walking resonates with devastating contemporary relevance. Its impact felt seismic.
This is opera at its highest capacity: posing unanswerable questions, creating space for profound feeling, then releasing us—irrevocably touched, fundamentally altered, alone with reconfigured thoughts.
For those yet to experience ENO, this production offers exceptional access to one of the twenty-first century's most significant operatic achievements, executed with impeccable artistry by world-class performers.
Until 18th November. Visit the ENO website for booking information, and book yourself a ticket now!
