Night of the Walking Dead

High culture got a high gloss the other week in San Francisco. At Davies Symphony Hall, Michael Tilson Thomas was leading the San Francisco Symphony in a bewitchingly lucid performance of Mahler's enigmatic Seventh Symphony. And across the street at the War Memorial Opera House, the San Francisco Opera was putting on the season's most important American premiere: Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally's musical setting of Dead Man Walking, based on Sister Helen Prejean's memoir of how she served as spiritual adviser to a hot-blooded Louisiana killer. In the audience were Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, who had collaborated on the 1995 film version.

McNally, the playwright and opera buff (The Lisbon Traviata, Master Class), claims that his first full-length libretto is not really "an anti-death penalty or -capital punishment opera," and he isn't kidding. The focus here is less on the fate of convicted murderer Joseph de Rocher (John Packard) than on how Sister Helen (Susan Graham) is transformed by ministering to a doomed man who refuses to admit his obvious guilt. An Elvis-loving goody-goody whose spirituality is tinged with smugness (Sister Helen on Jesus Christ: "He was a hothead and so am I."), she has grown immeasurably by opera's end through her unflinching acceptance of the implications of De Rocher's monstrous act.

Shrewdly, McNally never makes the mistake of dehumanizing the victims' families or downplaying the heinousness of De Rocher's crime, and except for the final scene, in which his lethal injection is staged as a quasi-crucifixion--an over-the-top touch unwisely lifted from the movie--agitprop and emotional blackmail are avoided. Graham is a believable and deeply affecting Helen, though the wily Frederica von Stade stole the show as De Rocher's anguished mother. Stir in strong direction by Joe Mantello and Michael Yeargan's cubist death-row set, and you get the makings of a highly stageworthy production.

The weak link is the score. Best known for his winningly lyrical art songs, Heggie, 39, has set McNally's libretto with enviable professionalism, but his handsomely made music lacks dramatic grip and speed; it never quite manages to get out in front of the powerful words. His decision to virtually omit music from the climactic execution scene suggests who was running the show (the conception was McNally's). A born opera composer would have taken that scene and galloped with it.

Under departing general director Lotfi Mansouri, the San Francisco Opera has won fame for big-ticket commissions derived from high-profile sources (Dangerous Liaisons, A Streetcar Named Desire). But in Dead Man Walking as in its predecessors, this brand-name, drama-driven approach has proved flawed in one crucial aspect. So far, it hasn't produced a single truly memorable score--and, as any proper opera buff can tell you, nobody goes home humming the libretto.