Helen Prejean

A death row inmate turns for spiritual guidance to a local nun in the days leading up to his scheduled execution for the murders of a young couple.

American composer Jake Heggie’s compelling masterpiece, the most widely performed new opera of the last 20 years, arrives in cinemas in a haunting new production by Ivo van Hove. Based on Sister Helen Prejean’s memoir about her fight for the soul of a condemned murderer, Dead Man Walking matches the high drama of its subject with Heggie’s beautiful and poignant music and a brilliant libretto by Tony and Emmy Award–winner Terrence McNally. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium, with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato starring as Sister Helen. The outstanding cast also features bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as the death-row inmate Joseph De Rocher, soprano Latonia Moore as Sister Rose, and legendary mezzo-soprano Susan Graham—who sang Helen Prejean in the opera’s 2000 premiere—as De Rocher’s mother.

Dominic Sivyer takes a look at six decades of the life and work of Sister Helen Prejean as she continues to be an inspirational force for justice.

Nearly 30 years ago, Sister Helen Prejean sat down and wrote “Dead Man Walking,” her testimony to the horrors of witnessing a human being executed at the hands of the government, and her call to rise up and challenge the systems that support the death penalty. In “Sister Abolitionist,” she sits down with Unincarcerated Productions to reflect back on writing the book that changed her life, setting her on the trajectory of becoming one of the world’s leading death penalty abolitionists, and changing hearts and minds around the world.