Part vaudeville, part opera concert and part drag ball, Heartbeat Opera’s pageant was like a cup of eggnog spiked with a dash of LSD.
Lady M, an Online Fantasia on Verdi’s Macbeth, Heartbeat Opera’s creative and thought-provoking foray into the Zoom opera scene, left me feeling alternately pensive, hopeful and somewhat uneasy, in a good way.
Heartbeat Opera has set Der Freischütz in a contemporary era, in a rural locale where gun culture reigns supreme and bullying is natural.
The story shows what may happen when corrupt individuals occupy positions of trust.
Heartbeat is, after all, a company that loves to tinker.
Cio-Cio and Carmen: what do you do with two tragic heroines who typify not just the sexist clichés, but also the soupy exotic fixations, of the Old-World West?
An astute double-feature exposes all the complexities of female suffering embedded within two canonical works.