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.

SLAYLEM:  The Witch Trials

Judson Memorial Church

With the purchase of a 10th Anniversary Gala Full-Day Ticket, you are supporting the 80+ Heartbeat artists working on the Spring Festival and enjoying an exclusive celebration with the artists behind the art!

10th Anniversary Gala with Heartbeat Opera Directors & Artists

BLACKBARN Restaurant

A young couple is 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.

EPSG:4326

Spring Festival 2024 The Extinctionist

Baruch College

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. Our radical adaptation maps the composer’s own complex biography onto his characters and asks — how can we ever break free of the life we are born into?

Spring Festival 2024 Eugene Onegin

The disco balls have stopped spinning at the only gay club in St. Petersburg, and there’s time for one last bedtime story. It’s Queers versus Kremlin tonight in an eye-popping, ear-thrilling battle replete with ambrosial arias, rude roosters, and a dacha full of divas. Don your dress, down your vodka, and dream dirty at Heartbeat Opera’s frisky riff on Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel.

The Golden Cock

Roulette Intermedium

Our next chapter begins with two brand new radical adaptations and reorchestrations of major classics led by two fabulous new directors: Shadi Ghaheri directs a brand new adaptation of Puccini’s Tosca, set in a modern-day religious authoritarian dictatorship, and Emma Jaster directs Lady M, our twist on Verdi’s Scottish opera.
Lady M, based on Verdi’s Macbeth, is the culmination of our “brilliant” (New York Magazine) and “riveting” (Opera News) early pandemic venture, Lady M: An Online Fantasia, for which we sold out 32 online soirees, reaching over 1000 homes across 5 continents. Emma, who has been Heartbeat’s Movement Director on countless projects, including Lady M online, takes the reins to direct Ethan Heard and Jacob Ashworth’s co-adaptation, conjuring a bracingly contemporary couple as the Macbeths, along with a complete sonic and dramatic reimagining of the three witches.
Running on back-to-back nights in rep will be our newest adaptation of Tosca, a piece we've been dreaming about for years, led by Iranian-American director Shadi Ghaheri. Our version translates Puccini’s iconic story of love and revolution to an unnamed religious regime, where an uncensored version of Tosca — in which corrupt officials are murdered, revolutionaries are executed, and, most importantly, a female heroine interrupts the cycle of violence — would never be allowed to happen. Things become daringly real when a troop of actors decide to risk their lives to perform it.

Tosca & Lady M

Baruch Performing Arts Center

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 Opera

10 - 12 Oct, 2024

SLAYLEM: The Witch Trials

Apr 7, 2024

10th Anniversary Gala with Heartbeat Opera Directors & Artists

Heartbeat Opera