Dead Man Walking at London Coliseum: 'worth the 25-year wait to see this opera finally staged in London'

Malachy Frame, Michael Mayes, and Christine Rice - (Manuel Harlan)

When contemporary opera struggles to find its own stories to tell, it plunders promiscuously from other genres — films, theatre, TV, novels. In the process, it runs the risk of becoming a mere footnote to its sources but that’s not the case with Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking.

It draws on a 1993 memoir by Sister Helen Prejean, recounting her experiences visiting prisoners on Death Row. A feature film followed in 1995, then came Heggie’s version, his first opera, premiered in San Francisco in 2000 and now the most performed of all 21st-century operas. Annilese Miskimmon’s new production for English National Opera is its first full staging in London.