“Heartbeat Opera’s ‘Dragus Maximus’ Reimagines a Classic Greek Myth as a Raucous Queer Odyssey”

– Read the Dragus spotlight in The Observer

Watch the Highlights:

Directed by Ethan Heard
Music Directed by Jacob Ashworth & Daniel Schlosberg
New arrangements by Daniel Schlosberg
Written by Ethan & Peregrine Heard
"Feed the Snakes" lyrics by Royce Vavrek and music by Daniel Schlosberg
Choreographed by Emma Crane Jaster
Costumes, Hair, and Make Up by Fabian Aguilar, Jon Carter, Miodrag Guberinic & Andy Jordan
Make Up by Maiko Ando
Lighting by Krista Smith
Projections by Shawn Boyle
Props by Corinne Gologursky
Stage Managed by Colin JB

Meet the Cast

Meet the Team

ETHAN HEARD

Stage Director

Ethan Heard directs plays, musicals, and operas. As Founding Co-Artistic Director of Heartbeat Opera, he has directed Dido and Aeneas, Kafka-Fragments, The Seven Deadly Sins, and the drag extravaganzas Miss Handel and The Fairy Queen. Other recent opera includes the world premieres of Orth and Campbell’s Empty the House (Curtis Institute of Music) and Cady, Siegel and Welch’s Sisyphus (Experiments in Opera); Erismena and L’Orfeo (Yale Baroque Opera Project), and L’incoronazione di Poppea (Princeton University). Recent musical theater includes Little Shop of Horrors, Bells Are Ringing, and A Little Night Music (Berkshire Theatre Group), the world premiere of Campbell and Michelson’s The Other Room (Inner Voices), Michelson's Song of Song of Songs (Judson), Merrily We Roll Along (Yale Dramat), Sunday in the Park with George (Yale School of Drama), and Mel Brooks’ The Producers (Princeton). Plays include: Lottie in the Late Afternoon and Julius Caesar (YSD), The Cat and the Canary (BTG), The Gay Ivy (Dixon Place), Iphigenia and Other Daughters and Proof (Santa Fe Theater Festival), Pullman WA and in a word (Williamstown Workshop). While earning his MFA at YSD, Ethan served as Artistic Director of Yale Cabaret, where he co-created Basement Hades and Trannequin and began the tradition of Yale School of Drag. He is Resident Director of Jay Chou's The Secret, China's first jukebox musical, and he is currently on faculty at Yale School of Drama, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and Princeton University. ethanheard.com

JACOB ASHWORTH

Co-Music Director

Jacob Ashworth is the “impressive Artistic Director” (New York Times) of Heartbeat's sister company, the baroque and modern “crack ensemble” (New Yorker) Cantata Profana, which he founded in 2012 at the Yale School of Music. He has also been Co-Music Director of Heartbeat Opera since the beginning. As a violinist and conductor, Jacob has gained a reputation from early baroque to contemporary music as a consummate stylist and ingenious curator of music, receiving the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming in 2016 for his work with Cantata Profana. His performances have been called “exacting and sensitive” (Boston Globe), “richly detailed” (New York Times), and “a flat-out triumph” (Opera News). With Heartbeat, he has made a specialty of leading operas from the violin, "doing powerful work from the music stand" (Opernwelt). Jacob earned his doctorate from Yale under renowned violinist Ani Kavafian, and studied baroque violin with Robert Mealy as a member of the Yale Baroque Ensemble. Jacob has performed extensively on period instruments, including as concertmaster for Nicholas McGegan with Mark Morris Dance Group, and with Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Staunton Music Festival, Juilliard 415, Helicon Ensemble, and New York Baroque Incorporated. His album, “Hermestänze,” appears on MSR Records, and features cycles for solo violin by composer Susan Kander, played “expressively and knowingly throughout” (Gramophone).

DANIEL SCHLOSBERG

Co-Music Director & Arranger

The music of composer and pianist Daniel Schlosberg has been performed by the the Dover Quartet, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, Amphion Quartet, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Antico Moderno, and Lorelei Ensemble, at such venues as Carnegie Hall (New York), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), St. John’s Cathedral (Hong Kong), and Melbourne Recital Centre (Melbourne). Recent work includes the score for a music-theatrical adaptation of Lorca’s Once Five Years Pass at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and music direction of Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Yale Repertory Theatre, where he premiered a score by David Lang. He cofounded the composer/performer ensemble INVISIBLE ANATOMY, which debuted last spring with concerts in New York City and at the Beijing Modern Music Festival. Schlosberg received a 2014 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and 2014 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a master’s from the Yale School of Music. His work has been described as “witty” by the Wall Street Journal.

Royce Vavrek

Lyricist

Royce Vavrek is a Canadian librettist who has been called "an exemplary creator of operatic prose" (The New York Times), and "one of the most celebrated and sought after librettists in the world" (CBC Radio). His opera “Angel’s Bone,” with Du Yun, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Other notable projects include JFK and Dog Days with David T. Little; Song from the Uproar, Breaking the Waves and Proving Up with Missy Mazzoli; 27 and The House Without a Christmas Tree with Ricky Ian Gordon; and The Hubble Cantata with Paola Prestini. Alumnus of Concordia University, NYU, and ALT’s Composer Librettist Development Program. www.roycevavrek.com

Emma Crane Jaster

Choreographer

Emma is an internationally-trained director, choreographer, and teaching artist based in New York.  She has choreographed operas for Juilliard SVA, Loft Opera, Opera Lafayette, and Heartbeat Opera, with whom she loves being an Associate Artist.  Her work has brought her to India, Italy, Poland, Taiwan, and France, choreographing for actors, singers, dancers, students, and puppets. She performed from childhood with her mime father, Mark Jaster and attended the Lecoq school for physical theatre in Paris.  She believes in the power of art to teach us to listen better and love more. She is the founder of an international collective of artist mothers whose work can be found under #mamaisamaker. www.emmajaster.com @notapapercrane