Apart from its full scale productions, Heartbeat Opera's other signature event is the Annual Drag Extravaganza, built around the music of a single composer or theme. Part performance event, part party, part opera, past shows include The Fairy Queen, Miss Handel, Queens of the Night: Mozart in Space, and Heartbeat on the High Line. Enjoy photos of these shows above!

PRESS FOR HEARTBEAT OPERA

"This small, adventurous company strives to make opera a visceral, intimate and immediate “encounter,” as they have said. Their alterations to masterpieces aim to get past dated elements that can mute the raw emotions and the timeless issues coursing within the original works. These presentations are meant, simply, as readings, as one-time interpretations." - Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times

"A radical endeavor — less pint-sized grand opera than an appropriation of the genre for theatre of the black-box type. - Alex Ross, The New Yorker

"Pioneers...reformatting the opera experience from the grand to the deliberately intimate." - The Wall Street Journal

"A radical transformational approach to the standard repertoire” - The Wall Street Journal

"Gripping drama...dazzling musical skills...clearly inspired guidance...a flat-out triumph." - Opera News

"With its six singers, five instrumentalists, and 90 minute running time, Heartbeat’s compact Lucia packs a wallop; one could imagine it being taken up by other companies as a provocative and inexpensive way to introduce opera to the uninitiated. One looks forward to more arresting and innovative projects like it from Heartbeat." - Musical America

“Urgent, rigorous, and young, Heartbeat Opera poses another beacon of hope against New York City’s gloomy operatic landscape. Heard and Proske are a pair of auteurs to watch for. Their intelligence and warmth saturate the respective works, making for a thoroughly enjoyable evening at the opera house.” - Parterre Box

“I skipped giddily out of the theater wanting to shout at the world: have you heard about this thing called opera?” - Van Magazine

Heartbeat Opera was founded in 2014 by Louisa Proske and Ethan Heard, who lead as Co-Artistic Directors, to create radical adaptations of classic operas in intimate spaces for 21st century audiences. In its first six seasons, Heartbeat has presented twelve fully-realized productions, often featuring new chamber arrangements and English translations. Heartbeat has taken its productions to the Kennedy Center, BAM, and Chamber Music North West in Portland, Oregon. It staged the first ever opera performance on The High Line and has mounted its immensely popular, interdisciplinary Halloween Drag Extravaganza each year since its founding, in iconic venues such as National Sawdust and Roulette. 

Heartbeat has been hailed across the national and international press, including three features in The New York Times, stories on CNN and the BBC, and an ALL ARTS/WNET documentary: “bold and vivid” (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).

For more information, go to
www.heartbeatopera.org

Heartbeat Opera transforms great works of the operatic canon through visionary adaptations, radical arrangements for chamber ensembles, and intimate, visceral productions that put the singers and the instrumentalists at the center of the work. Heartbeat distills opera to its essence, and cultivates new audiences for the art form.

INTERVIEWS

"Drag Queens And Gateway Drugs: How Heartbeat Opera Is Breathing Life Into The Classics"  --- Interview with Louisa Proske published on Huffington Post - READ HERE

"Heartbeat Opera: Reverence, Irreverence and Viscerality" --- Interview with Co-Artistic Directors Louisa and Ethan on Allegri Con Fuoco - READ HERE

Excerpt from DRAGUS MAXIMUS, directed by Ethan Heard, produced by Heartbeat Opera