Direction & Conception | Louisa Proske 

Louisa Proske is the Founding Co-Artistic Director of Heartbeat Opera and the designated Associate Artistic Director and Resident Director at Oper Halle, Germany (starting fall 2021), where she worked on the theater production Rigoletto. At home in opera, classical theater, and contemporary drama, her Heartbeat Opera productions include Der Freischütz, Don Giovanni, Carmen, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Daphnis & Chloé. She is the recipient of a 2018 Princess Grace Award and the subject of a recent feature in Opernwelt.

Music Director, Violin & Conductor | Jacob Ashworth

Co-Music Director of Heartbeat Opera since its inception, Jacob is the Artistic Director of Heartbeat’s sister company, the baroque and modern “crack ensemble” Cantata Profana (The New Yorker), which won the 2016 CMA/ASCAP National Award for Adventurous Programming. Jacob has been called a “lithe and nimble” baroque violinist (The New York Times), an “exacting and sensitive” new music player (The Boston Globe), and has gained a reputation as a consummate stylist and curator of music from early baroque to contemporary.

Composer, Piano | Daniel Schlosberg

Daniel Schlosberg’s work has been described as “richly detailed yet delicate” by The New York Times. His recent projects include the release of A Demonstration on New Amsterdam Records, Canal Songs for the Albany Symphony’s Erie Canal bicentennial, a fantasy on Twin Peaks for the Dover Quartet, and music for Jeremy O’Harris’s A Boy’s Company Presents. Last spring, Daniel was the pianist for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film West Side Story. Daniel has received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards.

Heartbeat Opera creates incisive adaptations and revelatory arrangements of classics, reimagining them for the here and now. Their new, interdisciplinary collaborations expand the boundaries of what opera can be. Grounded in the belief that excellent opera-making should build community and radiate beauty, Heartbeat Opera works toward an equitable and inclusive future for our art form, centered in love.

Heartbeat Opera developed The Extinctionist, the ensemble’s first original work, during a two-week residency. Founding director Louisa Proske, composer Daniel Schlosberg, conductor Jacob Ashworth, and librettist Amanda Quaid (who adapted her one-act play) rehearsed with Kelly Griffin and Claire Leyden, sopranos, and the baritones Benjamin Dickerson and Matthew Gamble. Schlosberg (violin) and Ashworth (piano) were joined by percussionist Caitlin Cawley and Guitarist Thomas Flippin. Concert versions of The Extinctionist were presented on May 29 and 30, followed by discussions with the audience about the residency, what inspired the playwright to dramatize the subject, the process of adapting the play to opera, and its urgent political message.

WATCH A SHORT DOCUMENTARY ABOUT HEARTBEAT OPERA’S RESIDENCY PROCESS AT PS21