Heartbeat Opera To Present New Production of SALOME At Irondale In Brooklyn

New York's Heartbeat Opera will present a new adaptation of Richard Strauss' iconic opera SALOME, transforming Oscar Wilde's tight, 100-minute thrill ride into a startlingly intimate Salome. Seven performances take place February 4-16, 2025 at Irondale Center in Brooklyn.

Originally packed with 17 characters, Heartbeat's reimagining by Jacob Ashworth and Elizabeth Dinkova homes in on seven powerhouse singers, each a crucial part of this pressure-cooker piece, spinning in their own cages as their world teeters on the brink. Particular attention goes to the expanded roles of the Page and Soldier, onstage throughout, each with a taut narrative arc leading through to the very end of the opera.

Sung in English to recapture the shock of Strauss's scandalous classic, Heartbeat's version features a fresh 10-instrument orchestration by Dan Schlosberg of one of opera's most extravagant scores. Schlosberg's arrangements of classic operas have been hailed as "ingenious" by The Wall Street Journal and "Heartbeat's secret weapon" by The New Yorker, and led to a New York Times feature story last season. His re-orchestrations are always front and center, with unexpected instrumentation and sound design. The production will be conducted by Heartbeat's "impressive" (The New York Times) Artistic Director Jacob Ashworth, who will also conduct Faust this spring, and led last year's Eugene Onegin.

The demanding, tour-de-force role of Salome will be played by soprano Summer Hassan. Hassan, who has been described as having a "big, lustrous voice" (The Cincinnati Enquirer), returns to Heartbeat after her captivating performance as Agathe in Der Freischütz in 2019. She has performed extensively with companies including the LA Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Little Opera Theater of New York, and many others. Soprano Francesca Federico is the alternate Salome and will perform the role Sunday, February 9 at 3PM. 

Salome is directed by Bulgarian director Elizabeth Dinkova, who makes her Heartbeat and New York debut with this production. (Heartbeat's website has an interview with Dinkova about her vision of Salome.) Dinkova is currently the artistic director of Washington D.C's Spooky Action Theater. Recent projects include Spooky Action's Frontiéres Sans Frontiéres, Sonnets for an Old Century and workshop of Syrena, Hamlet and Coriolanus at Shakespeare in the Woods, Rage, a play with music inspired by Stephen King's eponymous novel, the visual album TIT, inspired by Titus Andronicus and co-written with Jesse Rasmussen, at the NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival, The Seagull at Serenbe Playhouse, and the opera Orfeo ed Euridice at Bel Cantanti Opera Company.

Heartbeat Opera has become synonymous with visceral productions such as a Fidelio that recruited real prison choirs as the chorus, and a Carmen set on the U.S./Mexico border that featured accordion, electric guitar, and saxophone (and cut the famous “Habanera” from the opening but inserted it as the harrowing finale)—and its 2025 season promises more bracing surprises. 

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