| Heartbeat Opera mounts a reimagined EUGENE ONEGIN & the world premiere of THE EXTINCTIONIST, Apr 2-14 | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 07:39 pm EDT 03/16/24 | |
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| HEARTBEAT OPERA turns ten with the return of its SPRING FESTIVAL April 2-14 featuring two operas: a radically staged, re-orchestrated adaptation of a classic and the long-awaited premiere of Heartbeat's first-ever commissioned work EUGENE ONEGIN April 2, 4, 6, 7, 9 (JUST ADDED!), 11, 13 April 13 is now sold out This 100 minute adaptation, sung in Russian, injects Tchaikovsky's own biography into each of the characters. Co-Adapted by 2024 Obie Award-winner Dustin Wills and Jacob Ashworth Directed by Dustin Wills Music Directed by Jacob Ashworth Newly arranged by Dan Schlosberg THE EXTINCTIONIST April 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14 A new 75 minute one-act opera, sung in English, that wrestles with climate catastrophe and one woman's unorthodox choice. Update: Soprano Katherine Henly will replace Yvette Keong in the role of Woman. Music by Dan Schlosberg Libretto by Amanda Quaid Originally Conceived with Louisa Proske Directed by Shadi Ghaheri Music Directed by Dan Schlosberg Baruch Performing Arts Center 55 Lexington Ave. (25th St btw 3rd & Lexington Aves), NYC TICKETS START AT $35: heartbeatopera.org/tickets Introducing "Pay What You Want" (starting at $10) for the April 4 Eugene Onegin & April 5 Extinctionist New York, NY — Heartbeat Opera—the indie company whose daring, stripped down takes of classic operas have been called "a radical endeavor" by The New Yorker and "revelatory" by The Los Angeles Times—returns to Baruch Performing Arts Center with its Spring Festival from April 2-14, 2024. The company performs two operas in rep: a reimagined EUGENE ONEGIN, and Heartbeat's first-ever commissioned opera, THE EXTINCTIONIST, by composer and Heartbeat Opera Music Director Dan Schlosberg and playwright Amanda Quaid. Schlosberg has long been the "secret sauce" of Heartbeat Opera's productions. His chamber arrangements of classic operas, hailed as "ingenious" by The Wall Street Journal and "Heartbeat's secret weapon" by The New Yorker, are always front and center, with unexpected instrumentation, sound design and electronics. After last season's MACBETH, Oussama Zahr wrote in The New York Times: "Schlosberg, with the vision of a master sculptor, chipped away at Verdi's score to reveal new contours and continuities in the music and action. He didn't so much reduce Verdi's orchestration as reinvent it for an ensemble of six musicians (including himself as conductor and pianist)...They played like a band possessed...It was flat-out brilliant." THE EXTINCTIONIST—Schlosberg's first opera, in which he again conducts from the piano—offers a moment to celebrate his brilliant work with Heartbeat Opera over the last decade. "We are thrilled to be putting on Dan's opera—it's new, yet so quintessentially 'Heartbeat'," states Artistic Director Jacob Ashworth. "ONEGIN is a bucket list piece and I'm so excited to adapt Tchaikovsky's masterpiece with Dustin Wills (2024 Obie Award for Wolf Play, Montag, and Wet Brain) as we continue to be a place for brilliant theater directors to shake up the opera world." In addition to Dustin Wills winning an Obie last month, two designers in the Spring Festival won Obie Awards: Kate Noll (set design for The Extinctionist and associate set design for Onegin), and Haydee Zelidith (costumes for both The Extinctionist and Onegin). Heartbeat has become synonymous with visceral productions such as a FIDELIO that recruited real prison choirs as the chorus, and a CARMEN set on the U.S./Mexico border that featured accordion, electric guitar, and saxophone (and cut the famous "Habanera" from the opening but inserted it as the harrowing finale)—and its Spring Festival promises more bracing surprises. EUGENE ONEGIN A brand new 100-minute adaptation. Sung in Russian. Subtitles in English. Tuesday, April 2, 7pm Thursday, April 4, 7pm Saturday, April 6, 7pm Sunday, April 7, 7:30pm NEW ADDED DATE: Tuesday, April 9, 7pm Thursday, April 11, 7pm Saturday, April 13, 7pm (SOLD OUT) Inside the ornamented drawing rooms of a buttoned-up society, three young outsiders flame into mismatched passion and combust, hurtling toward irreparable choices. Tchaikovsky's long-suppressed queerness floods into every character of this propulsive drama, as they smash against one of the most romantic operatic scores in history. Heartbeat Opera's adaptation of EUGENE ONEGIN looks at romance and friendship through the lens of Tchaikovsky's suppressed queerness. The desires of all three main characters—Onegin, Tatyana, and Lensky—are warped and transmuted by the pressure of their society, so that they resist definition even as they demand expression. A series of only recently uncensored letters written by Tchaikovsky to his brothers give a fuller, clearer insight into the oppression he faced for his sexuality. An excerpt of one such letter to his younger brother (September 28, 1876, Moscow): "Can you understand how it kills me to think that people who love me can sometimes feel ashamed of me! It's happened a hundred times. What I want is to get married or openly have an affair with a woman in order the shut the mouths of all those scum. Since my letters to you I've already given way three times to my proclivities. Only the other day I made a trip to the village where Bulatov lives, and fell madly in love with his coachman. So you're quite right when you say that people are totally incapable of not yielding to their weaknesses." This reimagining of EUGENE ONEGIN comes at a time in which many Russian artists are being forced to flee the country or live under terrifying risk. In Heartbeat's hands, Tchaikovsky's psychological masterpiece becomes an acute expression of the impossibility of liberation and acceptance that remains true even in our most progressive societies today. This production marks the major New York opera debut for the fast-rising theater director Dustin Wills, who just won an Obie Award for his Direction of Wolf Play, Montag, and Wet Brain, and also recently won the Lucille Lortel award for Wolf Play. Other plays he has directed include Frontières Sans Frontiéres, named in The New York Times' Top Ten Theatrical Productions of 2017 and a Time Out New York Critics Pick; and Plano, called "rare theater magic" by Austin's Sightlines Magazine. Dan Schlosberg's new 8-instrument orchestration exposes the tensions between domestic strictures and illicit desire inherent in EUGENE ONEGIN. Folk timbres, unbridled romanticism, and electric soundscapes shade the score as it takes unexpected turns, while remaining true to the essence of Tchaikovksy's ravishing masterpiece. Composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Libretto by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky & Konstantin Shilovsky Adaptation Dustin Wills & Jacob Ashworth New Arrangement Dan Schlosberg Director Dustin Wills Music Director Jacob Ashworth (doubling on violin) Scenic Designer Dustin Wills Costume Designer Haydee Zelideth Lighting Designer Reza Behjat Stage Manager Abril Valbuena Dramaturg Peregrine Teng Heard Festival Production Management Intuitive Arts Management CAST Eugene Onegin Edwin Joseph Tatyana Emily Margevich Lensky Roy Hage Olga Sishel Claverie Filipyevna Tynan Davis Larina Shannon Delijani Prince Gremin Lloyd Reshard Jr. ORCHESTRA Conductor/Violin Jacob Ashworth Violin/Electric Violin Elissa Cassini Viola Mira Williams Cello Nan-Cheng Chen Bass/Electric Bass Samuel Zagnit Clarinet/Bass Clarinet/Saxophone Kristina Teuschler Horn Nicolee Kuester Harp Deanna Cirielli Guitar/Electric Guitar/Balalaika Nicoletta Todesco THE EXTINCTIONIST A world premiere 75-minute opera. Sung in English. Wednesday, April 3, 7pm Friday, April 5, 7pm Sunday, April 7, 3pm Wednesday, April 10, 7pm Friday, April 12, 7pm Sunday, April 14, 3pm "Who in their right mind brings a child here?" THE EXTINCTIONIST follows a young couple trying to have a baby. Ice caps are melting. Forests are burning. In the face of environmental collapse, one woman wonders if the best way to protect a future child is not to have one at all. It all goes according to plan until she discovers she has little choice in the matter. In this dark comedy, a woman's body becomes a battleground of political anguish, conflicting desire, and existential dread. The first opera composed by Heartbeat Opera's Music Director Dan Schlosberg follows the story of a woman making a difficult decision—to bear a child or not, in the face of climate change—contending with the choices that are available to her. The libretto by Amanda Quaid (based on her play of the same name) feels even more prescient in the face of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Shadi Ghaheri returns as director after her successful TOSCA at the 2023 Spring Festival, which The Wall Street Journal characterized as "clever" and Opera News described as "seamlessly tailored." THE EXTINCTIONIST also marks prize-winning writer, actor, and teacher Amanda Quaid's first opera libretto. Her work as a playwright, which she began in 2018, has been lauded on off-Broadway stages, and her screenplays have received widespread recognition at Oscar-qualifying festivals across the country. Originally workshopped in 2021 at PS21 in upstate NY, THE EXTINCTIONIST received a feature in The New York Times, in which Jacob Ashworth was quoted as saying "You can't really put climate change itself onstage. But what you can do is show what climate change does to a marriage, to a friendship, to somebody's choices in their lives, to their own activism, to their own involvement in the world around them." This 13-minute documentary shows an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the residency of the opera. THE EXTINCTIONIST is a piece that feels intrinsically "Heartbeat," even though it is a brand new work: a taut story, focusing on societal issues affecting real people, with a small cast and band, and an obsession with using the medium of opera to unleash the emotional avalanche inside the drama. CREATIVE & PRODUCTION TEAM Composed by Dan Schlosberg Libretto by Amanda Quaid, based on her play Originally conceived with Louisa Proske Director Shadi Ghaheri Music Director Dan Schlosberg Scenic Designer Kate Noll Costume Designer Haydee Zelideth Lighting Designer Reza Behjat Projection Designer Camilla Tassi Puppetry by Afsaneh Aayani Stage Manager Chris Griswold Dramaturg Peregrine Teng Heard Festival Production Management Intuitive Arts Management CAST Woman Katherine Henly (replacing Yvette Keong) Man Philip Stoddard Friend Claire Leyden Doctor Eliam Ramos ORCHESTRA (Schlosberg conducts from the piano) Violin (doubling Viola) Suliman Tekalli Electric Guitar Taylor Levine Percussion Katherine Fortunato Heartbeat's Spring Festival April 2-14, 2024 Baruch Performing Arts Center Heartbeat Opera heartbeatopera.org "Every Heartbeat event feels like a happening." – Opera News Heartbeat Opera was founded in 2014 to create incisive adaptations and revelatory arrangements of classics, reimagining them for the here and now. Since then Heartbeat Opera "has already contributed more to opera's vitality than most major American companies" (New York Times), and has established itself as a highly-respected, innovative force in the opera world. Two years ago, after eight years as Co-Music Director, Jacob Ashworth became Artistic Director, with Dan Schlosberg as Music Director, and in 2024 Heartbeat welcomes Christian De Gré Cárdenas as its new Executive Director. After a triumphant first season under new leadership, Heartbeat Opera's legacy of radical adaptations of classic opera continues, and the company "hasn't skipped a beat" (The New York Times). Amidst distressing news of theaters contracting and shuttering across the country, Heartbeat hopes to help keep Opera thriving by bringing in new audiences, reimagining the classics, and telling the stories only opera can tell. In its first nine seasons, Heartbeat presented fourteen fully-realized productions, often featuring new chamber arrangements and English translations. Heartbeat Opera adaptations, which can be seen as world premieres of classics, speak to the moment, here and now. Fidelio featured a primarily-Black cast and more than 100 incarcerated singers from six prison choirs. Carmen was set on the U.S./Mexico border and featured accordion, electric guitar, and saxophone. In Tosca, a mostly Middle-Eastern cast braved the authoritarian censorship of an unnamed religious regime to tell their story. Heartbeat Opera has shared its work at the Kennedy Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Broad Stage, The Mondavi Center, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, and Chamber Music North West. It staged the first ever opera performance on The High Line and has mounted its immensely popular, interdisciplinary Halloween Drag Extravaganza each year at iconic venues such as National Sawdust and Roulette. During the pandemic, Heartbeat took Lady M, its adaptation of Verdi's Macbeth, online and sold out 32 Virtual Soirées, reaching 740 households across 5 continents; it also created Breathing Free, a visual album, which was nominated for the 2021 Drama League Award for Outstanding Digital Concert Production. Heartbeat Opera has been hailed across the national and international press, including in four features in The New York Times, in stories on CNN and the BBC, and in an ALL ARTS/WNET documentary: "Bracing—icy vodka shots of opera instead of ladles of cream sauce" (The New York Times), "elegant and boisterous" (New Yorker) , "fascinating and gorgeous" (Observer), "ingenious" (Wall Street Journal), "gripping and entertaining" (Opernwelt), "a flatout triumph" (Opera News). Heartbeat Opera has collaborated with organizations such as Atlas DIY and A BroaderWay to bring opera education to young people in NYC, and during its west coast tour of FIDELIO was represented by the world class artist agency Opus 3 Artists. After taking the leap to welcome new leadership last year, as its founders moved onto the Board, Heartbeat Opera continues to push the boundaries, "demonstrating the strengths that make it so vital to New York's opera scene" (The New York Times). Heartbeat Opera's Spring Festival is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the city council. Additional support for the Festival is provided by a grant from OPERA America. Heartbeat Opera is also proud to be supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation. |
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