Singer

Heartbeat Opera presents our 10th Annual Drag Extravaganza, a hilarious, irreverent party at the bold intersection of drag and opera! ORGY & BESS takes off from Porgy and Bess, but goes on to skewer the entire opera canon. What happens to Bess after Porgy? She stumbles from the 1920s into 2025 NYC, and the first person she meets is Cio-Cio-San from Madama Butterfly. Then it's Lucia from Lucia di Lammermoor. As more characters travel through the magical glory hole, the orgy heats up, and Bess learns about the trap of being a trope. Together with her new sisterhood, she takes a journey to radical self-love through a whirlwind of arias and numbers from Madama Butterfly, Turandot, Norma, Lucia, Carmina Burana, Lohengrin, The Mikado, The Wiz, Rent, and more!

ORGY & BESS: Deep Throats & High Notes

Judson Memorial Church

Strap into your corsets, hoist up your petticoats, and get down with the sexiest and most problematic arias ever shot out of the operatic canon. Heartbeat’s signature spectacle returns for its celebratory 10th edition, directed by none other than our co-founder and Drag Show legend, Ethan Heard. Let’s walk the tightrope of wokeness together, smear our faces with all the colors of the rainbow, and see what Bess gets up to when she meets her fellow opera queens in the dark alleys and dressing rooms of New York City.

A lonely scholar makes a bargain with the devil, and all hell breaks loose. Heartbeat Opera’s distinctly American adaptation tells the story of Faust and Marguerite — a man who wildly misuses his regained youth, a young woman whose potential for life and love is cut tragically short, and the ravaged community left in their wake. Retelling one of most popular operas of all time, we ask what happens when the soul hasn’t evolved along with the mind? When voracious ego rules us, and reckless forward motion is all?

EPSG:4326

Faust

Baruch College

Drag the witch! Rip off your bonnets and sneak into the woods of Puritan New England, where bible thumpers and booty bumpers rendezvous in secret gothic gaiety. Cast out those prudish finger-pointers with the rapturous music of Copland, Donizetti, John Adams and more, as American history spreads herself open for you at Heartbeat Opera’s cockamamie Crucible.

Bass

John Taylor Ward

Events

Past events

Oct 30 - Nov 8, 2025

ORGY & BESS: Deep Throats & High Notes · Heartbeat Opera

Oct 30 - Nov 8, 2025

ORGY & BESS: Deep Throats & High Notes · Heartbeat Opera

Future and recently performed repertoire

Singer in ORGY & BESS: Deep Throats & High Notes by Schlosberg

Heartbeat Opera

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