Opera: HEARTBEAT OPERA (2021-22 Season, NYC and Tour)

FIDELIO
Heartbeat’s first tour

February 10, 12 & 14, 2022 at Met Live Arts, New York City
February 19 at The Mondavi Center, UC Davis, California
February 22 at The Scottsdale Performing Arts Center, Arizona
February 26 & 27 at The Broad Stage, Santa Monica, California

Music by  Ludwig van Beethoven
Original libretto by  Joseph Sonnleithner  &  Georg Friedrich Sonnleithner
Adapted & Directed by  Ethan Heard
Arranged & Music Directed by  Daniel Schlosberg
New English Dialogue Co-Written by  Marcus Scott  &  Ethan Heard
Featuring  Derrell Acon  (Roc),  Curtis Bannister  (Stan),  Kelly Griffin  (Leah),
Victoria Lawal  (Marcy),  Tim Mix  (Pizarro)
and more than 100 incarcerated singers in six prison choirs  

Watch  Fidelio  Trailer

“I was blindsided by its impact” — Alex Ross,  The New Yorker

Heartbeat was planning to take its  Fidelio  on tour in 2020, the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. Then the pandemic hit, affecting incarcerated people especially and forcing them to postpone the tour. Then George Floyd was murdered, sparking a much-needed racial reckoning. Now, with humility and a renewed sense of purpose, Heartbeat  has  the opportunity to bring the tour back and even expand it. The story of their  Fidelio  is more urgent and timely than ever:

A Black activist is wrongfully incarcerated. His wife, Leah, disguises herself to infiltrate the system and free him. But when injustice reigns, one woman’s grit may not be enough to save her love. Featuring the voices of imprisoned people, this daring adaptation pits corruption against courage, hate against hope.

Heartbeat is thrilled to continue its  work on this  Fidelio, updating the libretto for our current moment, deepening the  company’s commitment to anti-racism in all that they  do, collaborating more with their prison choir partners, sharing the production, and sparking important conversations. This tour is Heartbeat’s largest and most ambitious venture yet. They have the opportunity to reach thousands of new audience members, including hundreds of young people, in four cities across the country.

QUANDO, ossia  Project “0”
In-person screenings w/live performances in NY  and Long Beach,  April 2022
A co-production with Long Beach Opera
The pilot production of  NO EVIL Projects

Creative Produced by  Derrell Acon
Music Directed and Arranged by  Daniel Schlosberg
In-person screenings with live performances in New York and Long Beach in April 2022
(dates TBC)

Some of the most beautiful and famous music from the operatic canon becomes the landscape for this fierce social satire of sex, activism, and the performance of everyday life. Music from Verdi’s operas  La Traviata  and  Don Carlo  and Gluck’s  Orfeo ed Euridice  are repurposed and refashioned into a 25-minute short film that follows a starry-eyed young couple as their night on the town unravels into a surrealist swirl of decadence, intrigue, and  ultimately, vengeful justice.

The short film, a co-production with  Long Beach Opera  and produced by Heartbeat’s  newly-appointed Associate Artistic Director  Derrell Acon, will be screened as is, and then followed by a second presentation that features live composer-performers actively disrupting and reconstituting the music from the score for a one-of-a-kind theatrical experience. No two performances will be the same, as the ending will change with each iteration of the live performances, and audiences will be challenged to re-examine their perceptions of art and its role in societal transformation.

NO EVIL  is an initiative meant to create a self-replenishing fund of seed money for new projects in the opera field by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color) creators. Acon is in conversation with OPERA America, the Sphinx Foundation, and other industry colleagues about the full structure of  NO EVIL Projects, which has an anticipated launch of 2022.

Says Acon: “As Arts Equity Specialist for the OPERA America New Works Forum, I had the opportunity to facilitate all-BIPOC adjudication panels for granting, and was deeply impressed by the nuance of perspective and intentionality centered in those discussions. I am convinced that the financial barriers experienced by marginalized creators in the field require even more attention and action—and, frankly, MONEY!”

THE EXTINCTIONIST
A new one act opera

Music by  Daniel Schlosberg
Libretto by  Amanda Quaid, based on her play
Directed, Conceived, and Developed by  Louisa Proske
Music Directed by  Jacob Ashworth

World Premiere Production Coming in Winter 2023

Watch 13-minute documentary about  The Extinctionist

During the 2020-21 season, Heartbeat Opera commissioned its first-ever opera,  The Extinctionist, a one-act work that grapples  with the catastrophic effects of climate change and one woman’s unorthodox choice to sterilize herself to save the planet and  become the very first “Extinctionist.”  The dark comedy turns  one woman’s body into  the battlefield of our political anguish, conflicting desires, and individual responsibility.

This past May,  The Exctintionist  was  featured in  The New York Times, which chronicled Heartbeat’s longtime commitment to reimagining classic works and its new expansion into commissioning.  A semi-staged production of the opera was presented in May 2021 at PS21 in Chatham, New York, and the world premiere is slated for Winter 2023.

Heartbeat Opera
“A radical transformational approach to the standard repertoire”
—  The Wall Street Journal