DON GIOVANNI

Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte
Adapted & Directed by Louisa Proske
Music Directed by Jacob Ashworth
New Arrangement by Daniel Schlosberg
Additional Direction & Musical Staging by Chloe Treat

Spring Festival 2018

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Cast

Zerlina // Samarie Alicea
Leporello // Matthew Gamble
Don Ottavio // Keith Browning
Donna Elvira // Felicia Moore
Donna Anna // Leela Subramaniam
Don Giovanni // John Taylor Ward
Masetto/Commendatore // Barrington Lee

Also featuring Zina Ellis (Gianotta, Bridesmaid and others) and Parker Drown (Best Man, Party Dude and others)

Production

Stage Direction // Louisa Proske
Music Direction // Jacob Ashworth
New Arrangement // Daniel Schlosberg
Musical Staging and Choreography // Chloe Treat
Fight Direction // Rick Sordelet
Set Design // Kate Noll
Costume Design // Beth Goldenberg
Lighting Design // Oliver Wason
Stage Manager // Dane Urban
Assistant Director // Jake Beckhard

Relive the 2018 spring Festival

Don Giovanni in the news

Meet the Team

Louisa proske

Stage Director

Louisa Proske directs opera, classical theatre, and new plays with equal passion. She is a Princess Grace Award winner, a Musical America New Artist of the Month, and the proud Founding Co-Artistic Director of Heartbeat Opera. Productions in opera include Agrippina (Lincoln Center - Carnegie Hall/ Juilliard Vocal Arts), La Bohème (Pittsburgh Festival Opera), Così fan tutte (LoftOpera), Don Giovanni, Carmen, Lucia di Lammermoor, Daphnis & Chloé (all Heartbeat Opera), Falstaff (Dell’Arte Opera), Gianni Schicchi, Riders to the Sea, La Voix Humaine (Yale Opera); the world premiere of Invisible Cities at the Italian Academy New York. Theatre productions include The White Devil (Red Bull Theater - NYTimes Critic’s Pick), peerless (nominated for a Berkshire Theatre Award for Outstanding Direction), Gaslight, This, Engagements (all Barrington Stage Company), One Day When We Were Young (Assembly, Edinburgh). www.louisaproske.com

JACOB ASHWORTH

Music Director

Opera News called violinist Jacob Ashworth's 2015 performance of Kurtag’s Kafka-Fragments “a flat-out triumph for its two fearless performers.” At home across the spectrum of classical music, Jacob has gained a reputation as a consummate stylist, from his “diligent attention to [baroque] period style” (NY Times) to his “exacting and sensitive” interpretations of modern works (Boston Globe).  Ashworth is violinist, conductor, and Artistic Director of Cantata Profana, which he founded at Yale School of Music in 2012, and Co-Music Director of Heartbeat Opera. For Heartbeat’s 2016 production of Dido and Aeneas, the New Yorker noted, “Ashworth, leading from the violin, elicited a performance that was elegant, boisterous, and melancholy by turns.”

Samarie Alicea

Zerlina

Puerto Rican soprano Samarie Alicea praised by The New York Times for her “bright-voiced and endearing soprano” made her New York City Opera role debut as Aire in Literes’ Spanish Baroque opera Los Elementos.  Most recently, Samarie sang as Clorinda in La cenerentola with NYCO’s Park Series at Bryant Park.  She has also been seen Off-Broadway in the role of Susana in Figaro 90210!, Samarie performed as Susanna in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro with Long Island Opera and as Servilia in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito with dell´Arte Opera Ensemble.  Samarie was a first prize winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Council District Auditions in Puerto Rico. www.samariealicea.com

Matthew Gamble

Leporello

Baritone Matthew Gamble is firmly establishing himself as an artist of versatility.  Operatic roles include Count Almaviva LE NOZZE DI FIGARO, Papageno DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE, title-role DON GIOVANNI, Sharpless and Yamadori MADAMA BUTTERFLY, Marco and Betto GIANNI SCHICCHI,  Sacristan TOSCA, Luther/Schlemil LES CONTES D’HOFFMANN, Don Alfonso COSI FAN TUTTE, Escamillo CARMEN, Undertaker PORGY AND BESS, and King Melchior AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS.  Highlights include Private Augenti in Sondheim's PASSION with the Théâtre du Châtelet and the world premieres of A Letter to my Nephew/Lance and Analogy/Lance aka Pretty the Escape Artist with the Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.

KEITH Browning

Don Ottavio

Tenor Keith Browning has been lauded for his “well-trained and versatile voice” for his portrayal of Nathan in Georgia Bottoms: A Comic Opera of the Modern South where he made his international debut this Fall in Budapest, Hungary. He has performed various contemporary operas including Sweets by Kate by Griffin Candey which was performed at the historic Stonewall Inn. This Spring, he made his debut with American Opera Projects and NYU's Graduate Music Theatre Writing Program in two half hour one-act operas. Recent appearances include the orchestral premiere of Evan Mack's Roscoe with the Albany Symphony Orchestra featuring Deborah Voigt and the World Premiere performance of Gregory Vajda's Georgia Bottoms: A Comic Opera of the Modern South with the Hunstville Symphony Orchestra in Huntsville, Alabama in 2014. He performed in works by Wang Ji, Randall Eng, and Michelle DiBucci for Opera America's New Works Showcase in January 2017 at the celebrated Town Hall Theatre in Times Square. 2015 appearances include the Young Artist Program at Opera Company of Middlebury where he participated in their production of Turandot. He has also appeared in various operas with Ash Lawn Opera, the Oratorio Society of Charlottesville, Seagle Music Colony, and Brevard Music Center including Il barbiere di Siviglia, Candide, La Boheme, and Albert Herring. Mr. Browning received his training at Stetson University in DeLand, FL and University of Maryland, College Park.

Felicia Moore

Donna Elvira

Soprano Felicia Moore is an ADOS candidate at The Juilliard School, where she will be performing at Songfest in Alice Tully Hall with Brian Zeger and Beethoven’s “Ah! perfido” with Speranza Scappucci and The Juilliard Orchestra. As a Merola alum, she will be returning to San Francisco to make her Schwabacher Debut Recital in March 2018. Last season at Juilliard she performed as the title role in Janáček's Katya Kabanova. Ms. Moore recently won The Sullivan Foundation Award. Previous awards include being a two-time Met Competition Semi-Finalist, as well as winning the top prize at The George London Foundation Competition.

Leela Subramaniam 

Donna Anna

Praised by Opera News as a “gleaming, pitch perfect soprano” and the Wall Street Journal as “piercingly lovely,” soprano Leela Subramaniam is turning heads with her rapid ascent to opera stardom. After winning the prestigious Opera Foundation Björn Eklund Scholarship, Ms. Subramaniam was invited to join the Bavarian State Opera Studio in Munich for the 2015/16 season, where she appeared as Miss Wordsworth in Albert Herring, Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro, Papagena in The Magic Flute, the Dew Fairy in Hänsel and Gretel, and Countess Ceprano in Rigoletto. Last season she made her debut with the Gärtnerplatz Theater in Munich in Purcell’s King Arthur and her LA Opera debut as Annu in Kamala Sankaram’s Thumbprint. For the 2017/18 season she joins the Metropolitan Opera to cover Papagena in Die Zauberflöte, Flower Maiden I in Parsifal, and Kate Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly.

Previous credits include the title roles of Thaïs and Lucia di Lammermoor at the Manhattan School of Music, where she earned her Masters, and Nero in Handel's Agrippina at UCLA, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree.

JOHN Taylor Ward

Don Giovanni

John Taylor Ward’s performances have been praised for their “Stylish abandon” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker) and their “finely calibrated precision and heart-rending expressivity” (Washington Post).  He is a frequent collaborator with Paul O’Dette, Stephen Stubbs, and the Boston Early Music Festival; William Christie and Les arts florissants; Sir John Elliott Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists; the Grammy award-winning ensemble, Roomful of Teeth. Other credits include the U.S. premiere of Claude Vivier’s Kopernikus under the direction of Peter Sellars as well as appearances at the Salzburg and Berlin Festspieles, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Edinburgh International Festival. Ward is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and holds three advanced degrees from the Yale school of Music. He is a founding core member of Cantata Profana and is the founding associate artistic director of the Lakes Area Music Festival.

Barrington Lee

Masetto/Commendatore

Barrington Lee is enjoying success on both operatic/concert stages worldwide. In 2012 he made his international operatic debut at Deutsche Oper Berlin in Prokofiev’s L’amour des trois oranges and was featured in concerts at Teatro Sodre, Uruguay and Mozarteum Argentino Festival. His recent engagements include Amonasro, Aida, Lyric Artists of New York; Morelos & Jackson, La Flamenca, OperaCréole; Sam, Blue Monday, L’Orchestre de Chambre de Genève. The 2017-18 season will feature Amonasro, Aida, The International Verdi Society; Bass Soloist, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, New Haven Symphony Orchestra; and Masetto/Commendatore, Don Giovanni, Heartbeat Opera. Please visit www.BarringtonLee.com for full biography/engagements.

Zina Ellis

Zina Ellis is an actor and singer from Illinois, now based in Brooklyn, and is thrilled to be working with Heartbeat Opera, albeit silently. She does, however, have a voice, which she has used to perform with a variety of straight and musical theatre groups in New York City. She most recently appeared as Phoebe Meryll in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard and has also sung in venues around the US and the world with multiple vocal ensembles. Love to my family and friends. BA Yale
 

PARKER DROWN

Parker Drown is an overly enthusiastic Opera neophyte and beyond thrilled to be joining the incredibly talented cast of Don Giovanni.
NY Theatre: Buyer and Cellar (Penguin Rep), The Lightning Thief (Lucille Lortel), The Good Swimmer (Here Arts Center), Cabaret (The Secret Theatre); Regional Theatre: Kid Victory, Hairspray (Signature Theatre), A Chorus Line, Spring Awakening (Olney Theatre Center), Speech and Debate (Rep Stage), Rent (Keegan Theatre, Helen Hayes Award). Thank you to Louisa, Dan, and the entire Heartbeat Opera family. And a special shoutout to Chloe Treat for not only her continued artistic inspiration, but also her sweet generosity of employment.