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One of our favorite people (operatic or not) is singer/songwriter Patty Spiglanin. We sent her to see Dead Man Walking at San Francisco Opera last fall and asked her to write about it for USOperaWeb.

In Her Own Words: Patty Spiglanin Goes to the Opera

I am 41 years old, and I sing, play rhythm guitar and write most of the songs for a Bay Area band called the Naked Barbies. Although I consider myself musical, I know little, actually nothing, about opera. I went to see Dead Man Walking at the San Francisco Opera last November for one reason only - free tickets.

It was not my first opera. I saw my first opera back in 1984, when the guy I was dating at the time, James, decided I needed some serious musical education, since as he so sensitively pointed out, my Southern Californian suburban upbringing left me woefully lacking on this count. James was from the East Coast, drove a 1963 blue MG convertible, wore motorcycle boots and sleeveless white t-shirts with German car maker logos on them, and was educated. Unlike me, who in one of my finer moments, referred to Debussy as "W.C." "You know, James, that guy who wrote that Clare de Lune thingee you played for me -- W.C. - as in W.C. Fields."

To ease me into the high-cultured world of Opera, he took me to see this happy, atonal ditty called Elektra. I remember little of the opera except it was dark - very dark -- and I couldn't understand anything that was going on and I was trying really hard not to fall asleep. Needless to say, it was not a Julia-Roberts-weeping-in-the-balcony-a-la-Pretty Woman kind of experience. It was around that time I gave up on James and opera.

Almost twenty years later, I decided to give it another try. My friend Robert gave me tickets to a matinee performance of Dead Man Walking, a new opera by a local composer, Jake Heggie. I started out the morning meeting my lead guitarist of four years for breakfast. It turned out that he had decided to announce to me he was quitting my band (we were recently dropped from our record label, so it wasn't a shock). After he awkwardly told me the news, I kinda said "Ahh, well, okay," and then had to sit through an agonizing 45 minutes of small talk while we finished our breakfast. Afterwards, I walked out into the pouring rain and broke into tears. But I had little time for emotional hysteria because I was almost late for the Opera.

This is all a way to set up my state of mind on that particular day, because what I didn't realize at the time, what I grew to appreciate as the experience unfolded, what I really needed to soothe my battered emotions -- and fortunately, oh so fortunately got -- was opera!

First of all, we got these fabulous seats in the first row, right in front of the orchestra. Being a musician, I would have been perfectly happy just watching the orchestra all night. I could stick my face over the side, close my eyes and just suck in the music - those big, beautiful sounds. I also liked watching the piano player get up and leave every once in awhile ("Where is he going?" "Is he bored?" "Does he leave to go smoke?")

Anyway, the lights went down and it was completely dark for a few seconds. Gradually you began to see the headlights of a car on stage. At first there was no music except what was coming out of the car radio as two young people frolicked naked on the darkened stage. Well, that was my first shock. Nudity in opera? Then the rapist/murderers arrived on the scene and I think my heart just about stopped. I knew the story. I had seen the movie. But as the brutality and violence of the scene was played out before me and the music from the orchestra began to swell and heave right beneath me, I don't think I've ever been so dramatically touched by anything before in my life. I immediately broke out into tears. It's not the same, seeing something like that live, as watching a movie at a movie theater or being spread out on the couch in front of your television. And it wasn't just the live element, it was the combination of what was playing out on stage and the music being played with it. To say it was overwhelming is an understatement.

I saw the second cast, with Kristine Jepson in the role of Sister Helen Prejean and Teddy Tahu Rhodes as the convict Joseph de Rocher. I had a hard time hearing Ms. Jepson singing over the orchestra (my seat location probably didn't help), but I thought her acting was very good and the lack of power in her voice didn't stop me from getting caught up in the story, especially once she got to the prison and started interacting with Mr. Hunk, ahh, I mean, Mr. Rhodes. Mr. Rhodes' voice was plenty powerful and my God was he nice to stare at for the duration. Another surprise -- I didn't expect to get that swoon swoon feeling (usually reserved for rock stars) at the opera, of all places.

During the scene when the sextet including the parents of the dead girl and boy and Sister Helen and Mrs. de Rocher all express their agony and emotion over the situation, the voices soared over the chorus and the music and energy all combined to communicate the complexity of the feelings, rather than the just the words. It affects you on a heart level that is so much deeper than merely grasping something through your mind.

The great thing about the whole experience was how cathartic it all was. I was depressed and full of emotion that day and where else could I have gone where the music and intensity of the event could match my mood. Sometimes life feels huge and thank God there's some place outside of a major sports arena that actually acknowledges that.

Though I know little about the history of opera, I've heard that it was once a popular entertainment, not unlike our movie blockbusters of today. After my experience seeing Dead Man Walking, that doesn't surprise me. I greatly regret letting James' attitude twenty years ago prejudice me against being able to enjoy opera. If opera is relegated to being viewed as unfathomable "art" that only a few aging, cultured types can understand, it is a great tragedy. Because this is great stuff.

What makes the art form unique to me, is its immediacy and the great opportunity for emotional connection. It's not like movies, which seem so detached and sterile by comparison. It's not even like live theater or even musical theater, because it somehow is given permission to be intense, if that's the right word. I mentioned "rock star" earlier and that's the only comparison I can make that seems right to me, because being at a great rock concert is the only experience I've had that comes close to the emotional and spiritual impact of what I saw that day.

Dead Man Walking merges that traditional, passionate quality of opera with a more contemporary theme and setting. It made no apologies for trying to connect with a larger audience of non-opera goers, and I think it succeeded beautifully. It got me to run out and get a book called Getting Opera, a Guide for the Cultured But Confused by someone named Matt Dobkin. It's written for a younger audience with the expressed purpose of trying to turn a new generation onto an old art. I love the book and I love that I am getting educated by someone with a sense of humor and broader appreciation for what Dobkin describes as that "ultimate fusion of the high and the low," that is opera. I can write no greater words of appreciation than the following: seeing Dead Man Walking has enriched my life.

Thanks Robert for the free tickets!

Check out the Naked Barbies' website at http://www.vagabondlovers.com. There's the story: a few years ago they got a record contract and the label didn't want to deal with a large, toy manufacturing corporation's lawyers, so they changed their name to Vagabond Lovers. Recently, the label got swallowed up, Vagabond Lovers lost their contract and now they're back to being who they always were, the Naked Barbies.