“The Best Classical Music of 2025, So Far”

“In Elizabeth Dinkova’s Heartbeat staging, the palace is a spare and seedy space in the present day, with dirty walls and beat-up office furniture. At one end is a bank of screens bringing in surveillance images from the property...”
”Presented in the intimate surroundings of the Space at Irondale, with the performers exposed between two blocks of seating, the queasy-making story unfolds with raw clarity...”

“Her final scene with the (very realistic) severed head was magnificently disgusting.
Heartbeat’s productions of canonical works are required viewing for a reason. Their relentless innovation and light-handed flexibility with the operatic canon mean that they can take their texts even more seriously than a traditional production
Salomé is a challenge for a small opera company for both practical and political reasons.[...]Heartbeat, never ones to play it straight, has found ingenious solutions to both”

“E. Diknova’s clever use of the Space at Irondale, with the stage and orchestra sandwiched by the audience. It feels both claustrophobic and voyeuristic, especially with Jokanaan stripped to his underwear in a glass prison centre stage.[...] It’s hard to imagine that the bigger house will be able to offer this level of artistic daring and visceral intimacy that has made Heartbeat Opera the city’s most exciting opera company.”

“Heartbeat Opera, spending a fraction of the Met’s budget, offered a riveting version of “Salome” on a chamber scale ”

“It’s “Salome” unfiltered, uncushioned by strings, exposed with a naked ferocity. All the characters are on the edge, and there is no escape for them[..] In Emona Stoykova’s gritty scenic design, Narraboth and the Page monitor security cameras showing the rooms inside Herod’s grand house (one image features the inaudibly arguing Jews). Jokanaan is always visible in his prison, a clear-walled cube at center stage. Watching and surveillance are the central motifs, taken to extremes.”