Heartbeat Opera Launches Third Season With Halloween Drag Extravaganza 'Queens of the Night', 10/31

By: Oct. 05, 2016
Enter Your Email to Unlock This Article

Plus, get the best of BroadwayWorld delivered to your inbox, and unlimited access to our editorial content across the globe.




Existing user? Just click login.

After a sold-out September performance on The High Line, HEARTBEAT OPERA-the daring young company whose unconventional orchestrations and stagings of classic operas have been called "a radical endeavor" by Alex Ross in The New Yorker-launches its third season on October 31, 2016 at the new music venue National Sawdust with Heartbeat's Annual Benefit Drag Extravaganza, this year titled Queens of the Night: Mozart in Space. Two performances take place at 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.

The creators of last season's Lucia di Lammermoor and Dido & Aeneas will be at the helm: Heartbeat Co-Artistic Directors Ethan Heard and Louisa Proske and Co-Music Directors Daniel Schlosberg and Jacob Ashworth. These four graduates of the Yale School of Drama and Yale School of Music will create an hour-long show combining Mozart's most beloved music, taking the audience on an adventure through the galaxy with their signature blend of eye-popping spectacle, gender-bending mischief, and musical mastery.


Each year's Drag Extravaganza celebrates a different composer (previous shows were Miss Handel and Purcell's The Fairy Queen). This year's Halloween-opera-party features Mozart favorites from The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and more, performed by rising stars John Taylor Ward (John Eliot Gardiner's international Monteverdi tour), Jamilyn Manning-White (Heartbeat's Lucia, "a knockout Lucia" - WSJ), Kristin Gornstein ("rich-voiced mezzo-soprano" - NYT), dancer/choreographer Emma Jaster, lip-syncing divas Taurean Everett (Little Shop of Horrors) and James Cusati-Moyer(Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), and more.

Heartbeat's resident band Cantata Profana, called "admirably varied and indefinable" by Zachary Woolfe in The New York Times, is comprised of Jacob Ashworth, violin; Daniel Schlosberg, keyboard and harpsichord; Michaël Attias, horns; Melanie Clapiès, violin; Andrew Yee, cello; Samuel Suggs, bass.

The set is designed by Reid Thompson, costumes are by Miodrag Guberinic(Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour) and Jon Carter (Broadway's King & I), hair and makeup are by Jon Carter, lighting is by Oliver Wason. Makeup is provided by MAC cosmetics.

Audiences can expect drinks, raffle prizes, a costume contest, and outrageous encounters with aliens, astronauts, and the cosmic Queen of the Night.

*

In May 2017 at Baruch Performing Arts Center, Heartbeat Opera's third season will culminate in two full productions: CARMEN, directed and adapted by Louisa Proske, arranged and music directed by Daniel Schlosberg; and MADAMA BUTTERFLY, directed and adapted by Ethan Heard, arranged by Daniel Schlosberg, music directed by Jacob Ashworth.



Videos