The Guardian

‘Raise the questions. Don’t provide the answers’: composer Jake Heggie on 25 years of Dead Man Walking
October 2025

“But you’re so young!” Julie Andrews exclaimed on opening night of Dead Man Walking, 25 years ago at the San Francisco Opera. I had pushed my way to her through the crowded lobby to introduce myself as the composer of the opera, fearful it would be my only chance to meet my first goddess. My first singing nun.

Was I that young? It was 7 October 2000. I was 39 and this was my first opera, my long-dreamed-of “big break”. Maybe I was naive, but I felt young and the world felt full of possibility that night. Much different from the world today.

Dead Man Walking was a bold story for the opera world at the time, especially since new operas produced by big companies were still something of a rarity. Nobody could have imagined or predicted that the opera would be a huge hit with audiences and that 25 years later Dead Man Walking would have received more than 85 international productions in 13 countries, staged by companies, colleges, conservatories and community groups of all sizes. Nobody could have predicted that during those 25 years, dozens of new operas would be created each year for every imaginable size company and performance space by a vast range of composers and librettists.