Matters of life and death: Dead Man Walking at the Barbican
Dead Man Walking
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Barbican
Balcony B25, £15
20 February 2018
Barbican page
I can imagine responding cynically to Dead Man Walking, and perhaps on a different day, in a different mood, I might have. But this performance won me almost wholeheartedly, and left me wondering how it can have taken 18 years for this emotionally acute and superbly constructed opera to receive its UK premiere.
My disgruntled inner cynic queries whether its cheating for an opera to take as its subject such a charged issue, especially for a first opera. What does this story gain from being an opera? What can opera add to what has already been done on page and on screen? How can you separate out your pre-existing response to the death penalty and your response to Heggie’s music? Is that important?
The solution rests largely, I think, with Terrence McNally’s libretto, and the way it is carried by Heggie’s score. Though McNally’s interpolations are occasionally corny (for example, Sister Helen leading singing lessons with her children), they are more frequently inspired, creating set pieces that lead us to an open-hearted engagement with the crises faced by each character, freeing us to join whichever dots we think are important in this story’s relation to the bigger issue. He also has a 19th-century eye for the placement and pace of these set pieces to enhance their dramatic currency. The parents’ sextet that ends Act I is a case in point: it is an overwhelming, full-ensemble finale; the many participants inhabit clear defined and violently differing viewpoints and emotional states; and I expect you would find it equally overwhelming, equally engaging, equally upsetting even if your opinions on the death penalty were diametrically opposite to mine. It is a gift for a composer interested in how music conveys drama.
Heggie must be said to be such a composer. His, to my ears, Bernstein- and Copland-influenced jazz symphonic style is by no means my cup of tea, but he has an undeniable gift for generating atmosphere that secures character while encouraging interpretation. The outstanding highlight for me in this respect was Joe’s Act I aria in which he recalls freedom. It was for me musically the most interesting movement, perhaps because of its orchestral sparsity and consequent intense focus on the heavily inflected voice part. That focus is heightened through the many narrative layers the aria inhabits – it evokes the languor of the event being recalled; the nostalgia and yearning and deep loneliness of the recollection; the fact that this is a human who once enjoyed sensuous pleasure but does no longer; the fact that this human ended the lives of others who once enjoyed pleasure; the fact that he sings of his lost pleasure and will not admit to his actions; the fact that he soon will die; the fact that he’s a person. It’s superb operatic writing.
Heggie and McNally’s success is of course thanks to excellent performers. Michael Mayes as Joe is a new discovery for me and I am an immediate convert: his voice has beauty and strength; his physical commitment to the role is total; he has absolute command of the vocal style Heggie requires. Joyce DiDonato is her usual impressive self, singing with great musicality and narrative integrity – but she pitched her performance a bit too sharp for my taste. The other roles are strongly cast (I did a double-take on seeing Susan Bullock as a parent), and Mark Wigglesworth unintrusively leads a huge ensemble which gives every indication of having been blisteringly well rehearsed.
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