Heartbeat Opera's Quando—a short film and live performance mashup co-produced with Long Beach Opera—begins its world premiere at The McKittrick Hotel's The Club Car April 7 Off-Broadway. The show will have three performances, playing through April 9.
Quando features a short film which plays twice in a row as live performers disrupt the second screening. The film follows a starry-eyed young couple as their night out unravels with refashioned music from Giuseppe Verdi's operas La Traviata and Don Carlo as well as Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. The live performers then use music from the opera canon to turn it into a satire. Musical director Daniel Schlosberg created new arrangements for four instrumentalists and electronics.
The live performance features Mx. Oww and Jessie Cox, while the creative team features production manager Neeki Bey and assistant production manager Gina Ferrara.
Soprano Lauren Michelle, tenor Brian Vu, and saxophonist Shelley Washington star in the short film. The film's ensemble includes Joseph Shafer, Nadia Maryam, Melody Morrow, Maria Dominique Lopez, Lauren Anderson Bustami, Nessa Norich, Malek Sammour, Carson Childs, Cheikh Mbow, Arianna Garber, Jonathan Lacayo, and Oscar Lujan. Jasper Jimenez, Xenia Deviatkina-Loh, Christopher Ahn, and Brian Walsh constitute the film's band.
Director and editor Vaden said in a statement, "This film challenges issues of representation, inequity, and self-serving actions that plague so many industries and movements, not by simply calling out the problem but by showing what is possible, while asking viewers to interrogate themselves and their motivations, which is one of my favorite sorts of 'call to action.'"
Associate artistic director Derrell Acon conceptualized and produced the work. It features photography direction by Kathryn Boyd-Batstone, production design by Yuki Izumihara, costume design by Naomi González and Lauren Cucarola, makeup and special effects design by Justine Fang, production sound mixing and editing by Brandyn Johnson, and music editing and mixing by Enzo Iannello. Screenplay is by Xan Churchwell.
Quando is a pilot project of No Evil Projects, an initiative to create a fund of seed money for BIPOC creators to develop new projects in opera. Each performance runs 75 minutes.
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