Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

Dead Man Walking

About the Librettist – Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally's was 25 when his first play was produced in 1964. Although he had moderate success with a subsequent series of comedies, it wasn't until the late 1980s that he gained an international reputation. Beginning with 1987's Frankie and Johnny at the Claire de Lune (which he adapted into a screenplay for Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer), McNally began a string of wildly successful works that included Andre's Mother (which won an Emmy for Best Writing in a Miniseries or Special in 1990); Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991); Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992– his first work for the musical stage, this show won the 1993 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical); Love! Valour! Compassion! (1994); Master Class (his legendary 1995 Tony-winning character study of soprano Maria Callas); Ragtime (a 1997 collaboration with Flaherty and Ahrens); and the extremely controversial 1997 Corpus Christi .

McNally's first opera libretto was a commission from Glimmerglass Opera, Great Performances, and New York City Opera. In collaboration with composer Robert Beaser, he wrote The Food of Love , the second of three one-act operas in the Central Park trilogy, which was premiered at Glimmerglass Opera in the summer of 1999. A year later, his second opera, Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking , was premiered in San Francisco.

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