San Francisco Opera basic director Lotfi Mansouri plucked Jake Heggie out of close to obscurity within the late 1990s and requested him to write down a brand new work for the corporate, pairing the composer with famed playwright Terrence McNally as his librettist. When the 2 creators sat down in 1997 to debate a doable topic for his or her opera, McNally supplied Heggie 10 decisions, leaving his favourite unnamed. Heggie stopped on the first merchandise on the checklist and unknowingly picked that desire: Sister Helen Prejean’s “Dead Man Walking.” “It was immediately, like, ‘Zing!’ ” the composer stated of Prejean’s unflinching story of serving as religious adviser to 2 death-row inmates. “That’s the one.