Heartbeat Opera Launches Season with Halloween Drag Extravaganza ALL THE WORLD'S A DRAG!

After its celebrated reinterpretations of Butterfly and Carmen last spring, HEARTBEAT OPERA-the daring young company whose unconventional orchestrations and stagings of classic operas have been called "a radical endeavor" by Alex Ross in The New Yorker-launches its fourth season with its Annual Halloween Drag Extravaganza, this year titled ALL THE WORLD'S A DRAG! Shakespeare in love...with opera. Three performances take place at National Sawdust on October 30 at 7:30 p.m. and October 31 at 7.30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.

Heartbeat's Co-Artistic Directors Ethan Heard and Louisa Proske and Co-Music Directors Daniel Schlosberg and Jacob Ashworth create a new hour-long show taking the audience on an Elizabethan-punk-drag adventure with their signature blend of eye-popping spectacle, gender-bending mischief, and musical mastery.

Each year's Drag Extravaganza celebrates a different composer (previous shows were Queens of the Night: Mozart in Space, Miss Handel and Purcell's The Fairy Queen). This year features favorite scenes from operas based on Shakespeare plays, including Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Verdi's Otello, Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream, and Bernstein's West Side Story.

The cast stars singing actors Lauren Worsham (Tony Nominee, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder; Dog Days), Sishel Claverie (NYCO, Heartbeat's "smoldering Carmen" - The New York Times), John Taylor Ward (John Eliot Gardiner's international Monteverdi tour), Joshua Jeremiah (Persona), and actors Ato Blankson-Wood (The Total Bent, "a breakout performance" - The New York Times), Stephanie Hayes (February House), and Peregrine Heard (Soot & Spit).

Heartbeat's resident band Cantata Profana, which has "won a following for bringing a theatrical bent to enticingly diverse programs" (The New York Times), is comprised of Jacob Ashworth, Daniel Schlosberg, Gleb Kanasevich, and Samuel Suggs. Costumes are designed by Seth Bodie (Frontières Sans Frontières), lighting by Joey Moro (Orange Julius), and projections by Nicholas Hussong (These Paper Bullets). Emma Jaster returns to choreograph, and Ethan Heard directs.

Audiences can expect appearances by Shakespeare, his most famous characters, and Queen Elizabeth herself. At all three performances, enjoy drinks and a costume contest. October 30 at 7:30 is a Benefit Performance with food, a special surprise guest, and raffle prizes.

Read The Daily Pnut and Huffington Post's interview with Heartbeat Opera about opera and drag. View photos from last year's Drag Extravanganza Queens of the Night in New York Magazine's "The Cut."

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HEARTBEAT THIS SPRING: From May 2-13, 2018 at Baruch Performing Arts Center, Heartbeat Opera's fourth season will culminate in two full productions: Mozart's DON GIOVANNI, directed and adapted by Louisa Proske, arranged by Daniel Schlosberg, music directed by Jacob Ashworth; and Beethoven's FIDELIO, directed and adapted by Ethan Heard, arranged and music directed by Daniel Schlosberg.