As the curtain rises, Sister Helen Prejean seems deep in prayer or meditation when suddenly scores of children and other nuns enter the Hope community center, which they run for children of the housing projects in New Orleans.
The book -- made into a 1995 movie with actress Susan Sarandon, who won an Oscar playing Prejean -- is well-known. Prejean, played here by mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, becomes a pen pal with death row inmate Joseph DeRocher in Angola prison some 150 miles from New Orleans. She goes to visit and gets drawn into the vortex of the morality of the death penalty and the tense emotions of the family members of the two teenagers murdered while canoodling in the woods.
DeRocher’s death sentence appeal is denied, the governor turns down his request for commutation of his sentence, and his execution is scheduled. “Forgiveness begins with honesty,” she sings to him. “Forgiveness begins with the truth. The truth, Joe. The Bible says, ‘the truth will set you free.’”His mother and brothers see a family member about to die and can’t reconcile the horrific acts he committed.
The video projection makes the operatic experience much more engaging than when I took an elective course in college on opera. I spent hours doing research in the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts writing a term paper on American operas like Virgil Thomson’s “Four Saints in Three Acts” and “The Mother of Us All.”
“I want the last thing you see in this world to be a face of love,” Prejean sings. “Look at me, Joe. I will be the face of Christ for you. I will be the face of love for you.”
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