The company, celebrating its 10th anniversary season, offers a contemporary spin on Tchaikovsky’s ‘Eugene Onegin’ and the world premiere of Dan Schlosberg’s eco-themed ‘The Extinctionist.’
By Heidi Waleson
April 8, 2024 at 5:04 pm ET
The company of ‘Eugene Onegin’ in the Heartbeat Opera production.
PHOTO: RUSS ROWLAND
New York
Heartbeat Opera, now presenting its 10th anniversary season at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, specializes in putting a contemporary spin on classic operas through musical and theatrical adaptation. Its take on Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” by Dustin Wills and Jacob Ashworth (Heartbeat’s artistic director) posits that Onegin’s secret love for his friend Lensky is the reason that he coldly rejects Tatyana’s amorous declaration and then goads Lensky into a fatal duel. But—as was the case with last season’s “Lady M,” Heartbeat’s version of Verdi’s “Macbeth”—the idea doesn’t quite cohere. Directed by Mr. Wills, the show bluntly shoehorns the concept into the score, which has been trimmed to 100 minutes and radically rearranged by Dan Schlosberg(Heartbeat’s music director) for nine musicians.
The conceit is love as performance and artifice. The set, designed by Mr. Wills, is a collection of frames, platforms, ladders, footlights and other backstage gear, handily assembled into different locations with the aid of the performers; costume designers Haydee Zelideth and Asa Benally mix contemporary outfits with dress-up clothes—an epauletted military jacket, a clown suit. When Olga and Lensky sing their first arias, they grab microphones and spotlights, suggesting that their emotions are as much performative as heartfelt. Prince Gremin, Tatyana’s adoring husband in the third act, is an automaton—his batteries run down at the conclusion of his aria, and he’s carted offstage on a dolly. Reza Behjat’s lighting emphasizes the switches from acting to—maybe—reality.
The gay subtext is subtle—perhaps too much so. Onegin and Lensky exchange some meaningful glances. During their confrontation at Tatyana’s name-day party—ostensibly over Onegin’s flirtation with Olga—Onegin gropes Lensky; they kiss for the first and only time just before the duel. But the actual opera gets in the way. Why would Onegin pursue Tatyana at the end? Do we interpret his explosion of passion for her as performance (the scene is played on a miniature stage, with the other characters as the applauding audience) or, perhaps, displacement? It’s not clear.
As for the other snag, this was Tatyana’s show. With her luminous soprano, Emily Margevich captured the young girl’s romantic abandon in the Letter aria, and the adult woman’s sense of loss in the final scene. As Onegin, Edwin Joseph’s colorless baritone was no match for her or for Roy Hage’s poignant Lensky, whose pre-duel farewell aria—to Olga and life—was eloquently sung. The adaptation also cut Onegin’s aria at the beginning of Act 3, making him seem even less consequential.
Mezzo Sishel Claverie displayed considerable personality as Olga; she donned the clown outfit and sang Monsieur Trinquet’s name-day salute to Tatyana, starting at tenor pitch and then wandering through different keys along with orchestration, like a slowed-down recording. Shannon Delijani (Madame Larina), Tynan Davis (Filipyevna) and Lloyd Reshard Jr. (Prince Gremin) ably sang chorus parts in addition to their own. Mr. Ashworth energetically led the ensemble from the violin. Mr. Schlosberg’s arrangement had some interesting elements, such as the harp filling in textures, and saxophone (one player tripled with clarinet and bass clarinet) that turned the Act 3 ball into a raucous, Kurt Weill-style cabaret. But the scrappy string playing and the electronic effects on the second violin, electric guitar and electric bass often left the music sounding muddy and chaotic, overdoing the swerve away from romance and into nightmare.
Eliam Ramos and Katherine Henly in ‘The Extinctionist.’
PHOTO: RUSS ROWLAND
Heartbeat’s first world premiere, “The Extinctionist” with music by Mr. Schlosberg and a libretto by Amanda Quaid (who wrote the play on which it is based), is contemporary from the start: Its protagonist, called only Woman (Katherine Henly), is agonizing about having a baby in a world being destroyed through human-accelerated climate change. “Every child born today is making it worse,” she tells her pregnant Friend (Claire Leyden). In a tight 75 minutes, the opera deftly seesaws between extremes—Woman’s longing for motherhood and her terror about the future. Man, her husband (Philip Stoddard), and her doctor (Eliam Ramos) keep suggesting that she will change her mind about her wish for sterilization; it’s left to us to decide if theirs is a reasonable response, a patriarchal reaction to “female hysteria,” or the obtuse dismissal of a modern Cassandra.
Mr. Schlosberg’s score reflects the centrality of Woman’s anguish: Her high-flying, jittery vocal line seems to brush off the vocal efforts of the other characters. The sound of the four-member ensemble (violin/viola, electric guitar, and percussion, led by Mr. Schlosberg from the piano) ranges from delicate transparency to electronic roar; it keeps returning to a two-note motif that evokes—depending on the moment—a heartbeat, a dripping tap, or the inexorable ticking of a clock. Two solo interludes—one for electric guitar, the other for drums—emphasize the ominous atmosphere.
Kate Noll’s spare set, with a bedroom on one side of the stage, a chair and table on the other, and some bare trees in front, incorporated the band as part of the show. Camilla Tassi’s projections suggested locations including a doctor’s office and a fancy shopping mall, along with the cataclysms of fire and flood. Shadi Ghaheri’s sensitive direction made clever use of a puppet for Woman’s dream about her imagined child and even managed the awkwardness of an onstage gynecological examination. Ms. Henly threw herself fully into Woman’s vocal and emotional turmoil. With Woman left alone at the end and her decision made for her, her haunting contemplation of a future in which “the sidewalks will be rivers again” captured the opera’s sorrowful ambivalence in the face of an impossible choice.
Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).
AndyManshel.nyc 
I totally agree about the Oneg
LikeLike