Heartbeat Opera

09/04/2026

Want a front row seat to the beauty and bloodshed? 🩸 Sn**ch your tickets for our 11th Annual Drag Opera Extravaganza, QUEENEY TODD: The Demon Bottom of Fleet Street! All seats are FEE-FREE only through Labor Day! 🤑

universe.com/queeneytodd

When Queeney Todd returns to London after a decade, this demon bottom is hellbent on revenge for all of the tops that did him dirty. A completely debaucherous new story meets a delirious mash-up of opera and musical theatre favorites in our gloriously over-the-top fever dream of dangerous desires and horrible coping mechanisms.

October 22-31 at Judson Memorial Church

09/01/2026

We’re serving looks and settling scores. 😈 Tickets for QUEENEY TODD: The Demon Bottom of Fleet Street are ON SALE NOW! Join us for our 11th Annual Drag Opera Extravaganza! 🍾

https://www.heartbeatopera.org/queeneytodd

Our outrageous annual fusion of drag, opera, and theatre explodes onto the Judson Memorial Church stage with all of the usual glamour and a brand-new director and choreographer: ballroom Legend Kemar Jewel.

We’re unleashing a deliciously twisted tale of old wounds, scorned lovers, and sweet, sweet retribution. When Queeney Todd returns to London after a decade, this demon bottom is hellbent on revenge for all of the tops that did him dirty. Soon, the scandal is too juicy for the rest of the operatic canon to ignore. As opera’s greatest divas, villains, and f*ckboys collide in a whirlwind of camp, couture, and carnage, no one is safe from the barber’s blade.

Revenge really never goes out of style.🩸
October 22-31 at Judson Memorial Church

QUEENEY TODD: The Demon Bottom of Fleet Street
Written and Created by Kemar Jewel, Jacob Ashworth, Peregrine Teng Heard, and Garrett Bell
Arrangements by Dan Schlosberg
Directed and Choreographed by Kemar Jewel
Music Directed by Jacob Ashworth & Dan Schlosberg

08/14/2026

OUR FIRST-EVER CAST RECORDING IS OUT TODAY! Listen here: https://sym.ffm.to/manon

From Jacob Ashworth, Co-adaptor and Heartbeat Opera Artistic Director:
"For years Heartbeat has wanted to turn one of our signature adaptations of classic operas into an album, and MANON!, with its punchy English lyrics, crystal clear dialogues, revolutionary approach to casting, irresistible orchestrations, and kinetic, fast-paced adaptation, is the perfect show where all the bravest and boldest ideas can come across in the sound alone. What arrives here is both a Broadway-style Original Cast Recording that captures the birth of a new work and a double-disc Complete Opera Recording of a classic that we hope goes down in the annals of history toe-to-toe with all the great Manons ever recorded.

When director Rory Pelsue and I set out to adapt this work and create a whole new book and lyrics, the influence of Golden Age musical theatre came fast. I knew that a Heartbeat audience encountering French opéra comique would crave not only literal translation, but a kind of whole cloth cultural translation. Rory popped the question: What if we hired Musical Theatre singers? Wouldn’t that be closer to how they originally performed this piece? Intrigued, we set up a workshop to test the concept. The result was so affecting and illuminating that we knew right then the essence of our adaptation would be to discover the Golden Age musical lurking within Massenet’s masterpiece and find the extraordinary artists capable of pulling it off.”

08/13/2026

The MANON! Original Cast Recording is out everywhere TOMORROW on Lexicon Classics. 💗

Last month, we had an extra special listening party with our cast, crew, band, producers, and team so they could hear it before anyone else. We can’t wait to share it with you.

The debut music release from Heartbeat Opera, a group that has “already contributed more to opera’s vitality than most major American companies” (The New York Times), MANON! transforms Jules Massenet’s classic tale of love, glamour, and reinvention into a dazzling new musical theatre-infused adaptation. Featuring a saucy new English-language book and lyrics by Jacob Ashworth and Obie Award winner Rory Pelsue and luscious new arrangements by Dan Schlosberg, who conducts from the piano, this Original Cast Recording preserves Heartbeat Opera’s “categorically imaginative and radical” (The New Yorker) approach to classic opera for the first time ever.

08/11/2026

The adaptation of Massenet’s opera played off-Broadway earlier this year.

08/10/2026

Coming this Friday! Pre-save the MANON! Original Cast Recording now: https://sym.ffm.to/manon

08/03/2026

“When I Close My Eyes (The Dream)” from MANON! is out now wherever you listen to music, and the full performance video is now available on YouTube!

Stream two tracks from the MANON! Original Cast Recording, coming August 14 from Lexicon Classics, at https://linktr.ee/heartbeat_opera

Heartbeat Opera’s MANON! takes Jules Massenet’s classic opera comique and transforms it into a dazzling musical theatre-infused reinvention, with a saucy new book and lyrics by Rory Pelsue and Jacob Ashworth and luscious new orchestrations by Dan Schlosberg. A glittering cast of opera-savvy Broadway voices, including Matt Dengler and Emma Grimsley (featured here), bring this thrilling adaptation to life on Heartbeat’s first-ever cast recording.

07/31/2026

"When I Close My Eyes (The Dream)", the second single from the MANON! Original Cast Recording, is out now! Listen to this dazzling aria, sung by our Chevalier, Matt Dengler, wherever you listen to music:

Choose your preferred music service

07/31/2026

L🎉 Music Pickup Notice! 🎉

What a way to kick off the weekend! Huge thanks to Deezer for featuring all three of our New Music Friday releases on their official “New Classical” playlist. 🙌🎶

Congratulations to Heartbeat Opera, Emiko Edwards, and the Eastman School of Music on this incredible recognition. We’re so excited to see these amazing artists and projects reaching new listeners around the world.

Thank you, Deezer, for championing new classical music and helping these extraordinary recordings shine. 💙

EmikoEdwards EastmanSchoolOfMusic LexiconClassics NowStreaming