Indie opera company Heartbeat Opera is kicking its fourth season off with its Annual Halloween Drag Extravaganza, this year’s titled “All The World’s A Drag: Shakespeare in love… with opera.” This original show, based upon the work of Shakespeare, will feature the immortal bard as he encounters the work of composers such as Verdi, Bernstein, and Purcell.

Praised for its bold reinterpretations of “Madama Butterfly” and “Carmen,” Heartbeat Opera seeks to delight audiences with three performances of its upcoming extravaganza in Brooklyn’s National Sawdust venue, with one taking place October 30,^t while October 31 will feature two performances at 7:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.

Previous iterations of the Drag Extravaganza have centered on different composers, such as “Queens of the Night: Mozart in Space,” “Miss Handel,” and Purcell’s “The Fairy Queen.” This year’s performances will showcase beloved scenes from some of the operas based on Shakespeare’s plays, including Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette,” Verdi’s “Otello,” Britten’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and Bernstein’s “West  Side Story.”

This original, hour-long show, created by Heartbeat Opera’s Ethan Heard and Louisa Proske (Co-Artistic Directors) as well as Daniel Schlosberg and Jacob Ashworth (Co-Music Directors), will take audiences on an “Elizabethan-punk-drag adventure” of ghoulish glamour and tantalizing travesti. Among the cast are Tony Award-nominated Lauren Worsham, Sishel Claverie, John Taylor Ward, and Joshua Jeremiah.

Cantata Profana, Heartbeat Opera’s resident music ensemble is a chamber group that covers a spectrum of Baroque and contemporary music for its inspired concerts which the New York Times has described as “admirably varied,” a quality which earned the organization the 2016 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.