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