Heartbeat Opera Announces LADY M, an Online Fantasia of Verdi's MACBETH

HEARTBEAT OPERA-the daring young indie opera company concludes its sixth season with its first adaptation of Verdi: LADY M, a reimagined and re-orchestrated work-in-progress, envisioning the story of Macbeth through the eyes of Lady Macbeth.

In light of COVID-19, Heartbeat Opera takes its LADY M rehearsals and performances online. Rather than cancel its production, the company launches a 10-day Remote Residency (April 20-May 1) with their artists rehearsing at home, followed by a series of intimate Virtual Soirées through Zoom video conferencing from May 11-16. The full production arrives in Spring 2021.

Each 45-minute Soirée will include: a welcome toast, introductory remarks, brief live performance by one cast member, and Q&A. Each Soirée will also feature two videos, newly unveiled for this project: a short documentary showing a behind-the-scenes look at Heartbeat's Remote Residency; and a music video of Lady M's "Sleepwalking Scene" sung by Felicia Moore, played by the six-piece band, and featuring the five other cast members of LADY M. Recordings of individual artists will be edited together as Heartbeat did in its recent acclaimed "Make Our Garden Grow" virtual performance.

LADY M features six singers, including a trio of soloists as the shapeshifting Weird Sisters, six instrumentalists, and electronic sound design. The band is the superb Cantata Profana. Daniel Schlosberg once again creates a brand new re-orchestration that weaves in sound design and electronics. Jacob Ashworth music directs.

Stripping away the clichés that have accumulated around Lady Macbeth and her story, Heartbeat's version explores ambition, gender, and violence through a contemporary American lens. Heartbeat Co-Artistic Director Ethan Heard, known for his socially conscious adaptations of classics like a Fidelio that recruited real prison choirs as the chorus, directs. His LADY M holds a mirror to NY in 2020: hedge fund managers and escorts, in glass towers and back alleys; the ferocious ambition and the nonstop drive.

Music Director Jacob Ashworth, Arranger Daniel Schlosberg, and Electronic Sound Designer/Performer Senem Pirler collaborate to breathe fresh life into Verdi's music. The band features piano, violin, clarinet, trombone, guitar, percussion, each doubling on an impressive array of additional instruments. Their adaptation distills Verdi's chorus of witches down to a virtuosic trio, the Weird Sisters, honoring Shakespeare's original text and endowing each sister with a soloist's importance. Picking up where Heartbeat Opera's Der Freischütz left off, Lady M continues to explore the realm of electronic music and sound design, especially as it pertains to evil and magic. Audiences can expect processing, contemporary vocal techniques, and other experimentation with electroacoustic sounds.

Ethan Heard directs a superb cast that includes singers from the Metropolitan Opera and Fort Worth Opera as well as graduates from several of the nation's finest Young Artist Programs.

Soprano Felicia Moore takes on Heartbeat's title role of Lady M. Ms. Moore recently drew wide acclaim as Susan B. Anthony in Louisa Proske's The Mother of Us All at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Critics compared her authoritarian presence and voice to Wagnerian roles, and Parterre wrote that she was "spellbinding, her enormous voice and expressive face carrying the evening, conveying a woman who, even as she creates it, is already thinking about how she will fit into history." Ms. Moore makes her Metropolitan Opera debut in Nabucco in 2021.

Baritone Quentin Oliver Lee, who made his Heartbeat debut as Killian/Ottokar in Der Freischütz earlier this season, performs the role of Macbeth. He was recently seen as a featured soloist in the Met Opera's 2019 Porgy & Bess. Bass Tyler Putnam, who previously played Masetto and The Commendatore in Heartbeat's production of Don Giovanni, returns in the role of Banquo. Mezzo-sopranos Sishel Claverie (Heartbeat's Carmen) and Taylor-Alexis Dupont, and soprano Jamilyn Manning-White (Heartbeat's Lucia) serve in the role of the iconic masters of fate, the Weird Sisters.

LADY M

An online fantasia of Verdi's Macbeth
through the eyes of Lady Macbeth, opera's most thrilling anti-heroine

Conceived, Adapted and Directed by Ethan Heard

Music Directed from the violin and Co-Translated by Jacob Ashworth

Newly Arranged by Daniel Schlosberg

Movement Direction by Emma Jaster

Electronic Sound Design & Performance by Senem Pirler

Starring
Felicia Moore as Lady M
Quentin Oliver Lee as Macbeth
Tyler Putnam as Banquo
Sishel Claverie, Taylor-Alexis Dupont, and Jamilyn Manning-White
as the Weird Sisters

and Heartbeat's resident ensemble Cantata Profana

Twelve Virtual Soirées, each 45 minutes
(replacing the originally scheduled performances at Irondale):
Monday, May 11 at 7:30pm and 9pm
Tuesday, May 12 at 7:30pm and 9pm
Wednesday, May 13 at 2pm and 8pm
Thursday, May 14 at 7:30pm and 9pm
Friday, May 15 at 7:30pm and 9pm
Saturday, May 16 at 2pm and 8pm

Music video of Lady M's "Sleepwalking Scene" to be unveiled at each Soirée

Heartbeat will also unveil a short documentary with behind-the-scenes
footage of the artists virtually collaborating from their homes

Tickets: $10 per device at heartbeatopera.org/lady-m

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