“As a kid, my mentors and friends were Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Debussy, Schumann, Schubert, and Bach.”

Double Coronation

Jake Heggie opens new seasons at the Met and in Houston with Dead Man Walking, his first opera, and Intelligence, his 10th

By Matthew Gurewitsch

Boyish at 62, the American composer Jake Heggie isn’t one to preen. “I was 39 when Dead Man Walking opened,” he says. “At that age, Mozart had been dead for four years.” Noted. But how many opera composers have scored a bull’s-eye the first time out? Mascagni, for one, with Cavalleria Rusticana, and then Leoncavallo, with Pagliacci. As for Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, Bizet, Puccini? Nope.

Adapted from Sister Helen Prejean’s memoir of two killers she counseled on death row (the source as well for the Oscar-winning Tim Robbins movie), Heggie’s instant classic went on from its San Francisco Opera premiere, in 2000, to some 70 productions as far afield as Copenhagen, Sydney, Cape Town, and Budapest. Just last month, the ritzy Metropolitan Opera followed suit, marking Heggie’s house debut.