New York’s Heartbeat Opera is set to present a new adaptation of Samuel Barber’s rarely performed opera “Vanessa” at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

The production, which will be directed by visionary R.B. Schlather, will be the first-ever opera presented at WTF. The work will be performed nine times between July 17 and August 3, 2025.

Of the adaptation, Schlather said, “I am struck by the cyclical quality of this work. These characters feel suspended in some kind of emotional isolation, replaying cycles over and over. They are dealing with existential ideas about who they are, what their destinies are, what to do with the material of their pasts, how to face their futures. They feel like people out of Greek Drama, completely tragic, pathetic, and poetic. I’m haunted by the atmosphere of the piece—eerie, stark, seductive, repressive, and also raw and brutal. It really pulls you in, gets under your skin. I’m particularly interested in what gets inherited, especially from woman to woman: trauma, silence, expectations. It’s not about the past, it’s about patterns. It exists out of time. That’s what elevates it for me to something mythic, tragic, monumental.”

The opera will star Inna Dukach, Ori Marcu, Roy Hage, Joshua Jeremiah, and Mary Phillips. Dan Schlosberg and Jacob Ashworth conduct the work, which will be pared down the opera to five singers and a tight, intermission-less 100 minutes.

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