We who live in Texas are fortunate to be in one of the world capitals of opera, and especially new opera. Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and Houston all have sold-out opera seasons that attract the old guard and the young hip. And, along with the century-old standards like Tosca and La Boheme, those audiences are seeing — and responding to — a record number of new operas by living composers, dealing with contemporary themes. Just in the last few seasons, we've seen Michael Daugherty's Jackie O, Carlisle Floyd's Cold Sassy Tree, André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire, Rachel Portman's The Little Prince, Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie's Harvey Milk, Mark Adamo's Little Women, and on and on.

And it's not just in Texas: we're living in a certifiable Golden Age, in which the American canon is getting opera-fied. Even the stodgy Metropolitan Opera in New York jumped aboard, with John Harbison's The Great Gatsby. Over 200 new operas have been written in America in the last ten years; almost half of those since the year 2000.

One of the big millennial standouts featured hymns, prayers to Christ, nuns and priests, and a spine-chilling call to forgiveness and unconditional love. It came from a first-time opera composer named Jake Heggie. He'd been writing songs for years, songs that had been sung by some of the best singers around: Frederica von Stade, Renee Fleming, Carol Vaness, Sylvia McNair. But audiences were stunned when Dead Man Walking hit the stage.

It had buzz galore: celebrity divas like von Stade and Susan Graham, renowned (and controversial) playwright Terrence McNally as librettist, a star-studded opening night, and a hot-button topic attached to a best-selling book and award-winning movie. At the center of all this, rightly, was the opera's composer. Music is what makes opera opera, and though Heggie's music was praised, conversations about the work often skip right over the music and how it works, going straight to the hot-button topicality.

Heggie's new opera The End of the Affair premieres in Houston this spring (wanna go?) , and deals with some of the same issues that made his first opera so compelling: faith, love, forgiveness, destiny. In fact, for Christians who are on the lookout for how our faith can converse with the culture, it would be difficult to find a more attractive or provocative modern composer than Jake Heggie. Other composers who have dealt with Christian faith (John Tavener, Arvo Pärt) have generally framed it as contemplative, solving modernism's problems by offering retreat. With Dead Man Walking, Heggie places a strong-minded nun right in the center of the most pressing political, social, moral, and religious issues a society or a person can face. And the culture took — and continues to take — notice.

Following an Austin performance of Dead Man Walking, Heggie and I had a wide-ranging conversation about this remarkable work.

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Barry: When was the first time that you knew you would write an opera?

Jake: (laughs) I had always loved the human voice, but I had never particularly thought about writing opera, because it's so massive, and, um, there isn't really a point in writing an opera these days, unless you have someone championing it, who's going to find money to produce it —

Right.

— because it will probably never see the light of day, in that case, and I'm not a big — I'm very practical when I write. (laughs)

(laughs) Right.

So it really had never crossed my mind, and it was when the General Director of the San Francisco Opera, Lotfi Mansouri, um, called me and, well he talked to me at a party one day and he said, "You're writing all these songs, being championed by these great singers, have you ever thought about writing an opera?" ... And I said, "No." (laughing) He said, "Well, let's talk about it because," he goes, "I think you, you might, it might be a, a good medium for you." So, um, we met the next day, and he said, "I want to send you to New York to meet with Terrence McNally, and see what you guys could come up with."

One of the great, uh, playwrights that we've got going right now.

Yeah.

Wow, so you never really asked for any of this, huh?

No, I didn't, actually; it just sort of came to me. I was never actively pursuing any of that, so.

Wow, wow.

Yeah, it's kind of miraculous in this business (laughing).

And so you settled on, uh, Dead Man Walking, I guess something that Terrence McNally wanted to do. Briefly, how would you describe the plot of Dead Man Walking?

It's a spiritual journey of redemption, and forgiveness. And it starts with the most sort of heinous crime you can imagine, um, a double murder and a rape, and it ends with another murder, but a state-sponsored one. The first one is initiated by, of course the, one of the main protagonists in the, in the story [Joseph de Rocher].

And we actually see that murder so there's actually no doubt at all that this guy's guilty.

Right. And that was very important to both of us, because we all know, you know, if someone's innocent, they shouldn't be put to death, but what do you do with someone who is truly guilty of ... about the most hideous thing you can imagine?

Right.

And that's sort of the dilemma, that's sort of the question that Sister Helen poses when she talks and in her work. Um, and we wanted to be very, uh, very up-front in the opera that there was no mystery, this is not you know a courtroom thing of did he do it or did he not. We know he did it. Now the question is what do we do? So it's a journey of, uh, it's through every human emotion you can imagine: from fear to extraordinary love to, you know, all the things that spring from both of those — all the anger and resentment and —

Sure.

— desire for vengeance, and ... and yet this mandate for forgiveness that most religions require too.

And in fact according to uh, somebody like Sister Helen, this, this story is the story, it's the story of our utter utter guilt and our need for redemption.

M-hm, I think so. I think so, I mean we are forced to take that journey; it's not a journey most of us want to face. But we make little journeys like this in our lives all the time. Um... I think it makes us realize, it certainly made me realize that I think the hardest place we have to go most of the time is absolute forgiveness. I think that's a very hard place for people to get to.

Now you got, uh, this stack of paper —

(laughs)

--from Terrence McNally, uh you really didn't have much choice in the lyrics or libretto, but you chose, how did you go about choosing the musical style?

Well, I actually did have a lot of say in the libretto. He told me up front, "I'm a playwright: I'm not a poet, I'm not a lyricist, I'm not a librettist. I'm a playwright. I'm going to write a play." And he said, "I'm going to overwrite the play, too, because what I'm hoping for is that some language will inspire music." Um, and so he gave — we talked for about a year before we started writing. We, we talked about what the situations were gonna be, who these characters were gonna be, what, how they were going to interact in each other's lives, and intersect. And then when he wrote the first act libretto, he handed it to me and my mind started going immediately into, um sort of — he outlined a lot of great possibilities for me musically, uh, in his libretto. He's very savvy about opera and music. And he told me, "If things don't work, you know, and you're, and the music is taking a certain direction," he said, "rewrite the words, put your own words, call me, email me, I'll send you other words," he goes, "but make sure the music is taking us where it needs to go," so. I just pulled on whatever I had in my musical history and language that seemed to serve the drama well. That's my job as a composer. As an opera composer: is to serve the drama well.

M-hm.

But I knew that I wanted it to have a, more of a ... a modern-day sound in the, more in the popular sense, not in the sort of modern classical sense.

Right. Academic modernism.

Right. So I knew that I would be drawing on, um, things that I grew up with, you know I grew up watching TV.

Sure.

So I had a lot, and my dad was a jazz saxophonist, and he had a lot of big band in his past and ... No one in my family really liked classical music except me. So (laughs) ... So I just drew on a cross-section of all kinds of things that I knew growing up. And my whole goal, too, in choosing that sort of musical language was — the one thing I did not want to do in this story was to alienate the audience in any way. I wanted to let them in. Because it's a hard enough journey to take, without struggling to understand why that particular music's there, or what does that mean, you know? I think it needs to be very clear storytelling, with a very difficult journey like this, so those were all conscious choices.

So, I guess you've been sort of lumped in with a, with a bunch of recent composers who have navigated the territory of modernism, while never being alienating, while always being very catchy to the ear and so on.

Well I think that's important (laughs). I mean we are in the theater and I know when I go to the theater I want a dramatic experience that embraces — that includes me, um but still offers me challenges, whether they be dramatic or musical, or, um, or otherwise. I want to be challenged, but I don't want to be alienated from what's going on.

Why do you think that opera is so popular today? Everyone's talking about how, well you know symphonies are in trouble and they're always in the red: opera's really just about the only growth industry.

Well, I tell ya, I really believe there's a couple of things. First of all, the invention of supertitles turned the whole art form around, because people can suddenly understand what's going on. But I think another reason it's doing well is because there's been a, a, — a departure from the traditional opera of stand-there-and-sing, to opera where characters look like they're supposed to look in the story, and there are productions that, um sort of challenge us and also offer new visions and perspectives on old dramas as well as new drama. And, it's theater. People respond to visual stimulation. Most people see more than they hear in the first place.

Right.

So when you have the combination of the visual with the music I think it just enhances the thing, it makes it more of an event, and um, I think people like events, and most people respond better when they have a visual that goes along with what they're hearing.

Now, so far you haven't done any, uh, anything more the equivalent of Così Fan Tutte, right? You're dealing with the more, uh, kind of heavy subject matter, right?

(laughs) Yeah, you know it's funny cause, uh, Dead Man was supposed to be a comedy originally, when, when Lotfi first approached me he wanted —

What?!

— he wanted a comedy, he wanted something real light and celebratory.

Oh, not, not that Dead Man was supposed to be —

Nononono, he wanted a piece that would be light and celebratory and fun, cause it was the millenium, and ... Terrence could not have been less interested in that (laughs).

Now he's always interested in all those big, uh, —

Yeah, Big Themes, and Big Drama, and he wanted his first opera to be a real drama, and uh I really wanted mine to be too; I just wasn't in a position to argue with Lotfi.

(laughs)

But, so Terrence did the arguing for me and —

Right, right...

— and you know and then Lotfi opened the field and said, "Well look, if he doesn't want to do a comedy, then, you know you guys find a story that works for you, whatever you want." So Terrence suggested this, and it, I just knew right away it was a brilliant idea.

Now your newest opera is based on the Graham Greene novel The End of the Affair, and it also deals kinda with —

Heavy spiritual things. (laughs)

Yes! Faith and destiny and what it's like to get what we ask for. Why are you, why are you drawn to this kind of stuff?

And also love: how do we balance love and faith in our lives in the face of absolute catastrophe. And I think it's a very timely subject in any period but especially now. This story takes place during the blitz in London, a city that thought it was sort of impenetrable, and nothing would ever happen there...

Right.

... and boom, everything was shattered. And this is a story about people in midlife, who feel very settled in their lives, in a way, and it's all their struggle to balance faith and love in their lives when things have been turned upside-down. It's an interesting theme for me because I think I struggle with the same things almost every day. I, I have this real ... uh, I think a lot of people do, you know: are we just biology, is this all a freak accident, or are there larger forces at work? And if so, why are things the way they are, and why are we here, and ... what is going on? (laughs)

Those are the Big Questions, right there.

You know, and I think I find, um themes in literature and poetry, and drama that ... that reflect that struggle that I go through almost every day.

So how is the experience of, for instance, the experience of writing Dead Man Walking — how did that affect your faith, your beliefs?

Well, it affected everything. It certainly threw into question everything. I, uh am embarrassed to say I was actually ambivalent about the death penalty before this project started. I, like many people, don't really want to go there. You know —

Right.

— I don't wanna go into that, because it's very unpleasant and it's very scary. But um, it's our responsibility. If the state is deciding who lives and dies, we need to be thinking about it could happen to someone we love or it could happen to us. And, do we really have that right? And, ... uh, does it really solve anything? And when you get deep into it you realize No, it really doesn't solve anything, and No, we don't have that right, and, ... um. My brother had this argument with me one time. He said you know Jake, what if mom was, was killed — wouldn't you want the killer to be executed? And I said you know, I probably would, Jason, but what if the killer was one of your children?

Right.

That's what we forget. We get so detached that we don't realize we all are very connected in this big human family. But we get into that us-them mentality. So it threw everything into question for me. It threw my faith deeper into question, too.

How so?

Well, ultimately what I, what I really found that I believe is that what we know of God and the divine is in the love that we experience with other people, face to face. It's, it's what lasts forever. Love never ends, you know? There is an end to hate, and there is an end to all of the negative things that we go through as humans, but love somehow never ends. And that's our responsibility to each other.

The theme of love being the only force that can penetrate sin is something that's, that's just about central to Dead Man Walking —

And to The End of the Affair.

Really interesting, you keep gravitating to these themes.

Yeah. (laughs)

The two characters that I see sort of played against each other in a parallel way are Sister Helen and Joseph's mother. Interestingly, both of them express the desire for, for Joseph to remember their face, you know, "Look at my face and see me smiling at you." But, uh, but Joseph's mother is sort of in denial. She's, Oh, I'm remembering you as a kid, I'm remembering you when you were innocent. Helen is looking straight through Joseph's crime —

Right.

— and saying that, uh, I love you through that.

Right, exactly. It's that whole, getting, finding a place of personal forgiveness, where you have to get beyond, um ... what this person did, and still recognize that they're a human being. So, yeah, it is, there're all kinds of juxtapositions like that: also the fact that Helen comes, at the beginning of the story, comes from a very sort of naïve place.

Right.

Uh, she knows what she believes, but it throws her whole faith into question, too.

She's maybe never put a human face onto all that: forgiveness, sin.

Well and also, a human face onto the terrible crime that happened, and to realize that, you know ... she even says in her book when she went to meet this guy she expected a monster to walk into the room. And lo and behold, there in front of her was a human being.

A human being like all of us.

Right.

A human being like all of us monsters.

(laughs) Right. And um, so juxtaposing her journey from sort of, you know this completely innocent world that she still lives in, ... um, to sort of finding out what she's made of, and what love really is, and that it can conquer all. And Joseph, who came from a very innocent place, but then immediately was thrown into a world where, you know it's not surprising that he committed a terrible crime at some point in his life. But to see how love still can enter his heart, and transform his life. You know, that to me is the fascinating core of the journey.

Let's talk a little bit about the music. Now, you chose to write this in the form of a music drama, which means basically the idea is you take these musical themes and weave them together. It's really more like a play set to music rather than like a bunch of songs.

Well, I would say, though, that it's, that it still is opera, in the sense that it's through-composed, and it uses what we call motifs — you know, leitmotifs — um, to identify characters and mood and situation, you know, who's going through what.

Yeah, there's this great scene where, right at the beginning of Act 2, uh, Sister Helen is talking with one of the other nuns [Rose], and they're talking about forgiveness, and there's this very lush, kind of almost romantic B-major theme:

Yeah.

I guess maybe that's the music of forgiveness: reaching through to somebody and just knowing that you've forgiven them. Later on, uh, Helen is talking with Joseph and saying, "Let me in," and Joseph goes, "Well have you let me in," and she goes, "Well yes!"

And that music comes back.

And that music comes back. A perfect example of music drama.

That's the first time she realizes that yeah, I really have, I've, uh, I've crossed that bridge.

And so without saying a word, the music tells us that she has felt this in the very depth.

M-hm.

There's a couple of other musical themes: um, when she's talking about going and seeing Elvis when she was a kid, and the violins have this little, uh, triplet boogie theme:

Well, later on, they're about to part; the guard comes in, and, and Joseph says, "I just want you to be there for me," and she says, "I'll be there for you," and you hear that music.

M-hm. Well it's the music that brings them together, ultimately. It's the moment when ... you know that Elvis theme, when they laugh together and they find common ground as person and person, not as nun and inmate. It's that common love of Elvis and love of his music, and being children and remembering that, that suddenly unites them as people, and I think that's the moment she makes the breakthrough. And it's the moment he suddenly realizes, I have a friend; it's not just that she's a nun ...

Yes.

... I actually have a friend who cares about what happens to me. Um, that's a huge moment for him, and it's a huge moment for her.

Later on when he has just confessed to his crime, the very first time that he has confessed, to anybody as far as we know, she says, "You did a terrible thing, you've done such a terrible thing, but you are still a son of God," and right then we hear this kind of precarious five-note theme that is actually the music of the prelude:

It's the very first notes that we ever hear in the opera Dead Man Walking. What's behind that?

That's sort of, when I wrote the first notes in that prelude, that five-note theme has a lot of different connotations. First of all, there's a, there's a five-note theme that is always associated, an aggressive five-note theme that is associated with the crime, which is:

And "Joseph de Rocher" is a five-syllable word, so his name is:

And the way I wrote it at the beginning, that five-note theme is sort of this, it's almost supposed to be like the ticking of eternity, that there's this thread of time running through this, this kind of sense of inevitability, and this sense of, um, time marching forward, but with a purpose. So when she says, "You are still a son of God," it's a combination of time moving forward, love, this stream of love that moves through everything, entering in to the picture, also this, his name, his crime, all of it is in there in some fashion. It's sort of a coming together of many many things.

Later on in that same passage, she says, "God is here right now." And just then we hear this:

...that we remember very very deeply from the end of Act I where the parents are telling Helen she doesn't know what it's like to have kids, she doesn't know what it's like to, to see your child die.

Again, that, that feeling of the parents, but it's a much different feeling, because she does know more now. She is more enlightened. So when she says, "God is here, God is here right now," her heart bursts open, that's the moment that Rose is talking to her about [in "Forgiveness"], "I wouldn't be surprised if your heart didn't burst from it." That love, that great love.

That's how you'll know you've forgiven.

Right. And also, just that moment when she realizes that she has um, ... she's achieved what she set out to do. That's all in that moment. Actually his main theme is going on in that section too. All of the themes are going on in that particular section. It's, it's the coming together of all of those moments that have led her to that point. And sort of she realizes that love, love does conquer it all.

A lot of our readers are artists in some way themselves: writers, graphic artists, dancers, actors, musicians of various types. What are your thoughts on expressing faith and truth through your art?

I think that's the only thing you can do. (laughs) If you're doing it honestly, um, you know there's so many different ways we express faith. I think when you're an artist, you know when you're expressing faith and truth because you're being honest with yourself and with your work. I don't think there's any other way to be. And it doesn't matter if it's something comical or very dark ... when you're being — you can always tell when someone's been honest, and I think when you sense that honesty, you feel their faith and their truth coming through.

I believe that there are these universal truths vibrating in the universe. And when you're lucky enough as a creative artist to sort of tap into one that's resonating violently — (laughs) — you sort of pick up on that vibration and then suddenly ... you feel like you're just listening and taking dictation to whatever is going on. You don't feel like you're actually coming up with something, it's just there. And then if you put it down honestly, and you get out of your way and just let it happen, then other people start to vibrate with it too. And then that, that vibration just gets stronger and stronger, depending on how many people experience it at a time. But it definitely starts with truth.

You've mentioned the sort of communal aspect of it and, and being able to have other people catch onto it. And man, Jake, you have had a stellar —

(laughs)

— stellar bunch of singers ...

I've been very lucky.

... interpret your music.

You know, I've been very very lucky.

What have you learned from them?

From all those people? You know, I can't imagine doing what they do: getting up on a stage in front of thousands of people and trusting your body and your vocal chords to, to convey all this amazing work, um, which can be so huge and so demanding and so taxing personally. But that it's your responsibility as a creative artist to give them stuff that they can connect with, and that they feel they can connect with to the audience, something that uses all of their resources to connect as a human being, you know, as an artist, with the audience. And that's always been my goal, is to give performers music they feel they can really inhabit and connect with on a deep level. So, the experience of writing the opera has just further enhanced that.

You know it's interesting, you know you asked how Dead Man has influenced my life on all those different levels, but it also has pushed me into wanting to do works that really do have spiritual themes all the time. Like I wrote a cello concerto that's called "Holy the Firm" which is based on an Annie Dillard book. I wrote that last year, and then I wrote another song for Susan Graham based on new meditations by Sister Helen and it's called "The Deepest Desire," and that's sort of her journey to getting to that place of going to be with convicts on a spiritual level. And um ... yeah, it's, it's really invaded my life, artistically and personally, this quest for bigger themes and deeper spiritual meaning. I still don't know where I am with everything! (laughs)