Heartbeat Opera

TUNE IN! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBIae6En5n8

On the heels of our wildly successful 2025-26 season, our 2024 production of EUGENE ONEGIN is now available to watch in full, professionally filmed and edited, on YouTube!

Staged by Obie Award winner Dustin Wills, this new reinvention maps Tchaikovsky’s long-suppressed queerness onto the story and unearths “a fresh and eloquent new reading of a beloved classic” (Parterre Box).

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?

VANESSA was just named to The New York Times’ Best Classical Music and Opera of 2026, So Far.

A hearty congratulations to the entire team behind this unforgettable production, and a special round of applause for Heartbeat’s Music Director Dan Schlosberg, a composer of the also-selected Complications in Sue at Opera Philadelphia.

"I adore Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera 'Vanessa,' a woefully overlooked American classic, and yet I’ve always felt that there’s a strange dreaminess to it, a sense that it’s always just out of reach. But R.B. Schlather’s radically minimal treatment, which opened at Heartbeat Opera in New York last month, had a clarifying focus I’ve never encountered. Streamlined to a single act of 100 minutes, with a new chamber arrangement by Dan Schlosberg, it leaned into the nightmarish purgatory and near-campy melodrama with expressionist shadow play, touches of noir and gripping immediacy. It was also physically immediate, with the performers, all as well-rehearsed as traditional actors, mere feet from audience members. So, in the mezzo-soprano Kelsey Lauritano’s astounding turn as Erika, you could watch in detail as the character’s tragedy took shape in her face and body, as much as you could hear it in her sound."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/16/arts/music/best-classical-music-opera-2026.html

Photography by Maria Baranova.

Today’s final performance marks the end of VANESSA’s blockbuster run in New York City. It has been a privilege to bring this historic production home to our community after an incredible debut last summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Congratulations to our entire cast, band, team, and staff on a record-breaking run and on the inspiring work of bringing this piece to life.

Heartbeat Opera presents
VANESSA
A brand-new 100-minute adaptation, sung in English
Composed by Samuel Barber
Libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti
Adapted by Jacob Ashworth
Newly Arranged by Dan Schlosberg
Directed by R.B. Schlather
Music Directed by Jacob Ashworth

CAST
Vanessa // Inna Dukach
Erika // Kelsey Lauritano
Anatol // Freddie Ballentine
Baroness // Mary Phillips
Doctor // Joshua Jeremiah

BAND
Conductor // Jacob Ashworth
Violin // Sunny Sheu
Cello // Thapelo Masita
Clarinet/Saxophone // Louis Arques
Trumpet // Grace O’Connell
Trombone // Sam George
Harp // Deanna Cirielli
Piano // Eliot Goldmund

TEAM
Adapted by Jacob Ashworth
Newly Arranged by Dan Schlosberg
Director // R.B. Schlather
Music Director // Jacob Ashworth
Set Designer // Jiaying Zhang based on an original design by R.B. Schlather
Costume Designer // Terese Wadden
Lighting Designer // Yuki Nakase Link
Dramaturg // Peregrine Teng Heard
Production Stage Manager // Brenna Comeau
Intimacy/Movement/Fight Coordinator // Skye Bronfenbrenner
Producer // Shannon Sindelar
Production Manager // Brian Freeland
Technical Director // Joey Shaw
Associate Music Director/Orchestra Manager // Jake Eisner
Assistant Stage Manger // Rachel Rice
Wardrobe Supervisor // Linnea Soderberg
Copyist // Harry Collins
Supertitles // Nicholas Betson
Repetiteur // Husan Chun-Novak

VANESSA was developed by Heartbeat Opera at Williamstown Theatre Festival as part of W71 in 2025.

Photography by Russ Rowland (1) and Maria Baranova (2)

“THE STUFF OF GENIUS” (Seen and Heard International)

Tonight and tomorrow are the final two chances to witness Heartbeat Opera’s VANESSA in New York City. Very limited tickets remain. Don’t miss it.

Photo by Russ Rowland

“What Heartbeat Opera has achieved with VANESSA is not simply a successful reinterpretation but a revelation… Their new rendering of VANESSA may be their most astonishing achievement yet”

Only two performances remain.

VANESSA — Theatre Beyond Broadway Presented by Heartbeat Opera Composed by Samuel Barber, Libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti Adapted and Musically Directed by Jacob Ashworth Newly Arranged by Dan Schlosberg, Directed by R. B. Schlather Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Avenue, in Manhattan May 12, 2026 - May 31,

VANESSA’s final week in New York City begins TONIGHT. If your desired performance is sold out, standby tickets may be available.

Secure remaining seats before they’re gone at heartbeatopera.org/vanessa VANESSA must end Sunday, May 31.

For SOLD OUT performances, a standby list will begin at the Box Office one hour before performance time. Names will be collected until five minutes before curtain, at which point remaining tickets will be sold for $50 each on a first-come, first-served basis.

Audience members must be present when their name is called in order to purchase a standby ticket. All standby tickets are subject to availability and may be seated anywhere in the theater.

Photography by Maria Baranova.

"VANESSA, as performed by Heartbeart, accomplished for me something never before experienced in opera in English: I CLUNG ONTO EVERY WORD. I didn’t even need to look at the supertitles."

Don’t miss a single word. VANESSA must end May 31.
heartbeatopera.org/vanessa

Less is more Vanessa is spare and compelling in Heartbeat Opera's production.

"THE REDEMPTION OF VANESSA... Samuel Barber’s 1958 opera was in disrepute for decades. A REMARKABLE new production is the latest evidence of its rightful resurgence." -The New Yorker

Performances must end May 31. heartbeatopera.org/vanessa

The Redemption of “Vanessa,” a Neglected Operatic Masterpiece Samuel Barber’s 1958 opera was in disrepute for decades. A remarkable new production is the latest evidence of its rightful resurgence.