Heartbeat Opera's 2021 Drag Extravaganza MESSY MESSIAH Arrives For The Holidays

Heartbeat Opera will bring back its beloved drag opera extravaganza. Heartbeat's annual tradition of mixing opera, drag, and the art of pastiche returns to Brooklyn's Roulette for the first time since 2019.

This year's pageant, Messy Messiah, takes place the week before Christmas (past drag extravaganzas were Halloween revelries) and will celebrate December holidays with wit and warmth. Three performances deliver familiar tunes by Handel, Tchaikovsky, Berlin, and much more (the Spotify playlist is here). Audiences can expect tradition with a peppermint twist.

These interdisciplinary celebrations playfully mix opera classics with pop culture and drag to create an otherworldly experience-making both opera and drag accessible to all. Each year features a new original script, timely messages, a fabulous party atmosphere, and songs virtuosically delivered by world-class performers garbed in custom gender-bending costumes. Each extravaganza is overseen and conceived by Heartbeat artistic director Ethan Heard, who founded the Yale School of Drag (which continues today) while a student at the Yale School of Drama.

Heartbeat's six past drag extravaganzas include 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.