Heartbeat Opera's 8th Drag Extravaganza Pits Queers Vs. Kremlin At Roulette This November

Heartbeat Opera returns with its beloved drag opera extravaganza this fall at Roulette. With a cast of returning Heartbeat favorites, The Golden Cock marks Heartbeat's most ambitious—and operatic—drag extravaganza yet.

In this year's pageant, The Golden Cock—Heartbeat Opera's frisky riff on Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel—the disco balls have stopped spinning at the only gay club in St. Petersburg, and there's time for one last bedtime story.

The show will include songs and arias from Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel, May Night, and Sadko; Rachmaninoff's Vocalise; Wynton Marsalis' Abyssinian Mass; Rossini's La Cenerentola and L'Italiana in Algeri; Ahrens and Flaherty's Anastasia the Musical; Leoncavallo's Pagliacci; Meyebeer's Dinorah; and Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun.

Heartbeat's drag extravaganzas always reimagine classic opera, but The Golden Cock is the closest they have come to making an adaptation of a full opera into a drag show. Rimsky-Korsakov's original is a fantastical tale about a hapless but war-mongering tsar who sets off towards the West with his army at the slightest crow of “danger!” from his golden cockerel. He becomes enchanted by a foreign queen who ends up seducing him, returning with him, and taking over his empire. Heartbeat Opera's version turns the fantastical into the fabulous, with costumes by one of New York's most celebrated designers, David Quinn — known for his work with artists such as Bridget Everett and Darrel Thorne.

The Golden Cock marks the Heartbeat Opera directorial debut for director and co-creator Nico Krell, who has assistant directed the past three drag extravaganzas. He has directed projects at Lincoln Center, the wild project, Mercury Store, The University of Toronto, TheaterLab, Princeton Summer Theater, and Lucid Body House and is a recipient of the Louis Sudler Prize, Princeton University's highest honor in the creative arts.

This year's star-studded cast features soprano Ariana Wehr, a graduate of the Cafritz Young Artist Program at the Washington National Opera; contralto Sara Couden, who has been praised by Opera News for her “unusually rich and resonant” voice; countertenor Daniel Moody, who makes “a profoundly startling impression” (The New York Times); tenor Elliott Paige, who was a member in the Grammy nominated recording of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X; bassist John Taylor Ward, whose performances have been praised for their “Stylish abandon” (The New Yorker); and emcee Maxim Ibadov, who is an arts specialist in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a teaching associate at Park Avenue Armory, and a National Coordinator for RUSA LGBTQ+.

Additionally, special guest John Holiday, who has been described as “one of the finest countertenors of his generation” (Los Angeles Times), will take the stage during the Gala (November 9 at 7:30).

Heartbeat's seven past drag extravaganzas include Messy Messiah; Hot Mama: Singing Gays Saving Gaia; Dragus Maximus: A Homersexual Opera Odyssey; All the World's a Drag! Shakespeare in love...with opera; Queens of the Night: Mozart in Space; Miss Handel; and Purcell's The Fairy Queen.

Heartbeat Opera was founded in 2014 to create incisive adaptations and revelatory arrangements of classics, reimagining them for the here and now. Since then Heartbeat Opera “has already contributed more to opera's vitality than most major American companies” (New York Times), and has established itself as a highly-respected, innovative force in the opera world. A year ago, after nine years as Co-Music Director, Jacob Ashworth became Artistic Director, with Daniel Schlosberg as Music Director, and Tim Hausmann as Executive Director. After a triumphant first season under new leadership, Heartbeat Opera's legacy of radical adaptations of classic opera continues, and the company “hasn't skipped a beat” (New York Times). Amidst distressing news of theaters contracting and shuttering across the country, we hope to help keep Opera thriving by bringing in new audiences, reimagining the classics, and telling the stories only opera can tell.

In its first nine seasons, Heartbeat Opera has presented fourteen fully-realized productions, often featuring new chamber arrangements and English translations. Heartbeat Opera adaptations, which can be seen as world premieres of classics, speak to the moment, here and now. Fidelio featured a primarily-Black cast and more than 100 incarcerated singers from six prison choirs. Carmen was set on the U.S./Mexico border and featured accordion, electric guitar, and saxophone. In Tosca, a mostly Middle-Eastern cast braved the authoritarian censorship of an unnamed religious regime to tell their story. Heartbeat Opera has shared its work at the Kennedy Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Broad Stage, The Mondavi Center, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, and Chamber Music North West. It staged the first ever opera performance on The High Line and has mounted its immensely popular, interdisciplinary Halloween Drag Extravaganza each year at iconic venues such as National Sawdust and Roulette. During the pandemic, Heartbeat took Lady M, its adaptation of Verdi's Macbeth, online and sold out 32 Virtual Soirées, reaching 740 households across 5 continents; it also created Breathing Free, a visual album, which was nominated for the 2021 Drama League Award for Outstanding Digital Concert Production.