The New York company offers a stark, taxing adaptation of the composer’s 1958 work, which centers on a woman waiting for her long-gone lover’s return.
By
Heidi Waleson
May 18, 2026 at 4:28 pm ET
Inna Dukach as Vanessa. RUSS ROWLAND
Heartbeat Opera’s 100-minute adaptation of Samuel Barber’s “Vanessa”(1958) by company artistic director Jacob Ashworth, first presented last summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, came off as a relentless screamfest in the cramped Baruch Performing Arts Center. Trimmed of its subordinate characters and chorus, it was directed with minimalist fervor by R.B. Schlather—set against a white wall with a few chairs, extreme shadow-throwing lighting by Yuki Nakase Link and modern all-black costumes by Terese Wadden.
Gian Carlo Menotti’s gothic libretto felt weirder than usual. The wealthy Vanessa has spent her life in seclusion, waiting for Anatol, the lover who abandoned her 20 years earlier. His son, also named Anatol, a penniless adventurer, arrives and seduces her as well as Erika, her niece. Which woman will accept his obviously feigned love? In this streamlined, starkly realized scenario, the cracks in the opera’s emotional logic are glaring.
Dan Schlosberg’s seven-player arrangement of Barber’s technicolor orchestration, conducted by Mr. Ashworth, was clever but mostly loud with prominent trumpet and trombone, contributing to a musical performance that had just one gear: ferociously strident intensity. Soprano Inna Dukach’sscenery-chewing Vanessa seemed demented from the start, oversinging the role in the small space. She was matched by tenor Freddie Ballentine’sforceful Anatol. Mezzo Kelsey Lauritano’s Erika got a few lyrical moments, including her signature aria, “Must the winter come so soon,” which was briefly reprised—unnecessarily—to drive home the bleakness of the ending. Baritone Joshua Jeremiah’s sentimental Doctor was overwhelmed by the tornado of the love triangle; Vanessa’s mother, the Baroness (mezzo Mary Phillips), was even more cryptic than usual. Even the famous concluding quintet, “To leave, to break,” a bitter dissection of love, was noisy rather than poignant or profound.
AndyManshel.nyc 