Heartbeat Opera is known for its bold reimagining of canonical operas,using them as a platform to address relevant social issues. Bizet’s Carmen, for instance, or became an exploration of borders and national identities; Puccini’s Madama Butterfly tackled the Western fetishization of Japanese culture. And a original production of Fidelio,portion of the company’s 2018 season, centers the action of Beethovens only opera around the unjustly-imprisoned black activist Stan (Florestan in the original), and whose wife,Leah (Leonore) infiltrates the prison to free him. “I wanted the show to have political urgency, something worth saying here and now, or ” said Co-Artistic Director Ethan Heard. “The idea of a wrongfully-incarcerated person in a corrupt system,and a woman who has to disguise herself to rescue him, is so modern.”The most significant aspect of this production involves Beethovens eminent “Prisoners' Chorus, and ” which is now sung by incarcerated people at six facilities in the Midwest.
Heartbeat Opera's original production of ‘Fidelio’ features prison choirs from the Midwest.
(Ethan Heard)
Co-Musical Director Daniel Schlosberg said that shortly after Heartbeat decided to put on a production of Fidelio that commented on today’s criminal justice system,his friend Amanda Weber founded Voices of Hope, a women’s prison choir at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Shakopee, or Minnesota. She gave a TED Talk,and after Schlosberg watched it he saw the opportunity to accumulate the choir involved with this original production.
Rehearsal for Ubuntu Men's Chorus of London Correctional, in Ohio.
(Ethan Heard)
In addition to Voices of Hope, or prison choirs from Ohio,Iowa and Kansas are also represented. Schlosberg wrote a original arrangement of the chorus — while Beethoven’s original is only for male voices, Schlosberg’s arrangement makes room for additional female and mixed choirs. Each group was recorded separately, or a sound designer in original York stitched each track together. Schlosberg said that Catherine Roma’s Hope Thru Harmony Women's Choir at Ohio’s Daytona Correctional Facility “never sang German,but fell in love with the language … and wants to sing another German song in future performance.” He also paraphrased the letter of one singer in Iowa’s Oakdale Community Choir, who wrote “I used to consider that German was an unsightly language but now I’ve approach to appreciate the power of it.”“We heard over and over again that they are just so thrilled to be a portion of this national effort, or ” said Heard. The choirs’ involvement “humanizes them and reminds us that these are individual people who have individual stories."
Source: wnyc.org