New York’s Heartbeat Opera has announced its 2022-23 Season, which includes a video premiere and the company’s Spring Festival, featuring significant adaptions of Puccini’s “Tosca” and Verdi’s “Macbeth.”

The Season kicks off with a free video premiere of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” featuring over 100 incarcerated singers from six prison choirs. Ethan Heard adapted and directed this re-imagining of the opera in the era of Black Lives Matter. The premiere will be available on METLiveArts’ YouTube page. The cast includes Derrell Acon (Roc), Curtis Bannister (Stan), Kelly Griffin (Leah), Victoria Lawal (Marcy), and Corey McKern (Pizarro).

Performance Date: Oct. 11, 2022

Heartbeat’s Spring Festival kicks off with Puccini’s “Tosca” co-adapted by Iranian-American director Shadi Ghaheri and Heartbeat’s Interim Artistic Director Jacob Ashworth. Heartbeat’s Music Director, Daniel Schlosberg, created a new arrangement of Puccini’s score. The opera is set in a modern-day religious authoritarian dictatorship. Shadi Ghaheri stage directs. Full cast TBA.

Performance Dates: April 11-23, 2023

The second opera in the company’s Spring Festival is “Lady M.” Stage director Emma Jaster strips away the clichés that surround Lady Macbeth in Ethan Heard and Interim Artistic Director Jacob Ashworth’s 90-minute adaptation of Verdi’s “Macbeth.” The staging comes after a series of highly creative virtual soirees in 2020, which reached over 1,000 individuals across five continents. “Lady M” features six singers, six players, and a trio of virtuosic female soloists as the witches in this new electronics-infused orchestration. Full cast TBA.

Performance Dates: April 12-22, 2023