Since publishing Dead Man Walking, the story of the condemned man to whom she ministered on Death Row, Sister Helen Prejean CSJ has had many avatars, most famously Susan Sarandon in the Oscar-winning movie. The bankable Susan Graham was the first to play her part in Jake Heggie’s instant-classic operatic adaptation, which premiered in San Francisco in 2000. The New York City Opera premiere, two years later, starred Joyce DiDonato, who now heads the season-opening Metropolitan Opera premiere of the piece. How’s that for staying power? Graham, meanwhile, takes the cameo role of the killer’s mother, originally played by Frederica von Stade. The new production is by Ivo van Hove, whose Met debut last season with a spare, colorless Don Giovanni made a big impression on viewers little acquainted with the stage history of the work and the director’s kit of clichés. That said, he’s capable of work on the razor’s edge, so let’s hope for that here. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who has taken to adjusting his podium attire to the work at hand, conducts, perhaps in an orange jumpsuit. —Matthew Gurewitsch