SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, Joshua Kosman
DEAD MAN JUST AS GLORIOUS ON NEW CD. "Dead Man" really is the towering achievement many listeners heard in 2000. The uncompromising sweep and sensitivity of this performance, caught in splendid stereo, only reaffirm the work's power ... Heggie and McNally have created characters with such empathy and assurance that they seem to stand before the listener in all their naked humanity. Here is Frederica von Stade's virtuoso turn as the convict's mother, with her unlettered display of raw sorrow and guilt. Most ravishing of all, here is Susan Graham's wise and vocally resplendent performance as Sister Helen, an irresistible melange of humor, tenderness, moral sinew and human frailty. These qualities, embedded in Heggie's resourceful and layered score, come through as vividly on disc as they did on stage, and conductor Patrick Summers shapes the proceedings with a masterly hand.
TIME OUT NEW YORK, Daniel Felsenfeld
Dead Man Walking is really the stuff of grand opera: It's got overblown pathos, a fraught love story, a far-off location (the Deep South, distant to most of us) and a dramatic death at the end. Here, composer Jake Heggie and librettist Terrence McNally offer a work that is sincere and moving without being manipulative. Heggie has an ear for melody and the specific voices for which he writes, and he has a spectacular sense of theater. McNally's libretto is compact, quickly segueing between scenes, and in combination with Heggie's tuneful, accessible music, it lends the opera a natural flow. The creators even handle the opening rape and double murder with surprising grace. Heggie's range of styles runs effortlessly from Richard Strauss to Gershwin and Sondheim to Elvis without mocking or aping these masters, and the results are always in service of the drama. Susan Graham is perfect as Sister Helen Prejean, breathing life into the complex character, and John Packard is appropriately rough as the prisoner De Rocher. In a gorgeous, small-but-mighty appearance, Frederica von Stade melts the heart as the mother of the convicted, appealing for her son's life. Their performances make Dead Man Walking a powerful, effective piece of theater.
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, David Patrick Stearns
Most remarkable are Heggie's dramatic instincts. His word settings are never literal; instead they seem to bypass the conscious mind and make perfect intuitive sense. Even a throwaway line like "Excuse me" has the right inflection and provides, in some small, unexplainable way, yet another view of the character's soul ... the opera stands outside of any preexisting tradition. Susan Graham achieves minor miracles of understatement. John Packard's coal-black baritone couldn't be better utilized, while Frederica von Stade is a touching figure of grief not only for the sake of her son, but for her otherwise tattered life. This recording is the calling card the opera needs to achieve the dissemination it deserves.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE, John von Rhein
... Lyric Opera really should add Dead Man Walking to its repertory of American Classics. Erato's superb original-cast recording conveys considerable impact as it unfolds in the music theater of one's mind. Heggie's music is equal to the emotionally intense subject, combining rich, appealing, singable lines for the able principal singers with a taut cinematic flow driven by McNally's libretto. Dead Man Walking has been criticized for not taking any moral stance, but this seems hardly important when you listen to the recording, where the drama as conveyed through the music and the words is all that really matters -- and it matters a lot.
PITTSBURGH POST GAZETTE, Robert Croan
This is indeed one of the best and most successful operas of the past half-century. The opera stands up very well on CD. The audio version, in fact, may be all the more effective to those who have seen the fictionalized film. Susan Graham creates a living human being of Sister Helen, most brilliant in her confrontations with the antihero Joseph de Rocher of John Packard or consoling the touching cameo figure of Frederica von Stade as the murderer's mother. Some scenes emerge almost more graphically in sound alone -- among them the Prelude that shows the crime and the reflective arias in which music expands on the action. Conductor Patrick Summers presides over all of this with consummate skill.
THE BOSTON HERALD, T.J. Mendrick
"DEAD MAN" SINGS ON CD. The opera seems even stronger than it did the night of its world premiere. That's not always the case with contemporary operas, which tend to succeed on theatricality or a star turn more than on musical values. Playwright Terrence McNally's taut libretto and Joe Mantello's punchy direction had a lot to do with the world premiere's success. So did full-throttle performances by Graham as Sister Helen, baritone John Packard as death row inmate Joseph De Rocher and mezzo Frederica von Stade as De Rocher's long-suffering mother. Heggie's music, conducted by Patrick Summers, still seems as lyrical and sincere as it did in the opera house. But its value is even clearer without such perfect visual embodiments of the characters as offered by the entire cast, and the eye-widening visual components. Listening to the CD, one can more fully grasp that Heggie's music is finely detailed in form and orchestration and, best of all, is the emotional springboard for the action. This is an opera with real heart, and that heart comes across through the speakers even better than it did across the footlights.
MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE, Michael Anthony
It's a powerful opera, beautifully performed. McNally's scenes come alive, and Heggie's score, which opens and closes with a spiritual, abounds in dramatic touches. His style is essentially lyrical, spiked with occasional dissonance. The two acts build to skillfully written ensembles.
THE DETROIT FREE PRESS, Mark Stryker
The American opera event of 2000 was San Francisco Opera's world premiere of Jake Heggie's "Dead Man Walking," based on the book by Sister Helen Prejean about her experience counseling murderers on death row. But for those of us who couldn't afford the plane fare, fate has sent an olive branch. A terrific live recording of the San Francisco production has arrived. "Dead Man Walking" offers a potent combination of artistic ambition and box-office punch. Heggie -- who had composed some well-regarded art songs -- writes in a sumptuous, neo-romantic style that singers adore and audiences can approach without fear. There is much to admire about Heggie's score. The arias are tuneful and emotion-packed, especially Sister Helen's evocative "This Journey to Christ" and two set pieces for Mrs. De Rocher, the mother of the murderer, Joseph. The first is an impassioned plea for mercy before a pardon board; the second is a heartbreaking remembrance of sweet images of Joseph's childhood. Moreover, Heggie crafts flowing ensembles and skillful transitional passages. The cast is exemplary. The principals -- Susan Graham (Sister Helen), John Packard (Joseph) and Frederica von Stade (Mrs. De Roche) -- sing beautifully. The secondary singers impress, too, and conductor Patrick Summers leads an inspired orchestra. In the end, the recording whets the appetite for MOT's upcoming production. The ultimate success of any opera is measured by whether it enters the repertory, and "Dead Man Walking" is off to a promising start.
BARNES & NOBLE.COM, Andrew Farach-Colton
One has to look back to "West Side Story" to find such an exciting and original piece of American musical theater. When the media stops insisting that Dead Man Walking is "about" the death penalty, then perhaps Jake Heggie's opera will finally be appreciated for what it is: a powerful and intimate lyric drama. Few composers today write so instinctively for the voice as Heggie does, and still fewer are able to write a heart-stopping ensemble like the Act 1 sextet "You don't know what it's like." And while he draws freely on American popular styles, like rock 'n' roll and gospel, the music's most poignant moments are in a more personally lyrical idiom. Perhaps the greatest indication of the composer's success is that he has created such memorable characters. The cast is terrific from top to bottom, and conductor Patrick Summers deserves considerable credit for inspiring such a dramatically incisive interpretation. The recorded sound is clear and richly detailed.
GRAMOPHONE, Patrick O'Connor
A fine contemporary American opera superbly sung and full of atmosphere.