Live at the Met, the Metropolitan Opera’s award-winning series of live, high definition (HD) opera transmissions to theaters around the world, returns for the 2023-24 season at the 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center with Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking.”

Live at the Met, the Metropolitan Opera’s award-winning series of live, high definition (HD) opera transmissions to theaters around the world, returns for the 2023-24 season at the 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center on Saturday, Oct. 28, at 1 p.m., with Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. It marks the Met’s premiere production of this contemporary masterpiece.

Originally broadcast live on Sat., Oct. 21 when the Opera House was presenting the Fredonia Jazz Festival, the Opera House recorded the opera and is presenting it as an encore on Oct. 28.

American composer Heggie’s compelling masterwork – the most widely performed new opera of the past 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.

Sung in English with English subtitles, this production runs three hours, 14 minutes with one intermission. Content Advisory: Dead Man Walking contains a depiction of a rape and murder, as well as other adult themes and strong language.

Individual tickets to each of the operas in the season are $20, ($18 Opera House members, $10 students). A flexible subscription of eight tickets which can be used however you want – one at a time to eight different operas, all at once for eight people, or anything in between – is available for $1.. Tickets may be purchased in person at the Opera House Box Office or by phone at 716-679-1891, Tuesday-Friday, 12-4:30 p.m. Tickets may be purchased online anytime at www.fredopera.org.

The Opera House is equipped with assistive listening headsets for the hearing-impaired. Simply request one from any usher or Opera House staff member.

The 1891 Fredonia Opera House Performing Arts Center is a member-supported not-for-profit performing arts center with a mission to “present the performing arts for the benefit of our community and region … providing access to artistic diversity … and high quality programming at an affordable price.” It is located in Village Hall in downtown Fredonia. For a complete schedule of events, visit www.fredopera.org.