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Opera Comes to the Williamstown Festival

Samuel Barber's Vanessa in a New Take by Heartbeat Opera

By: - Jul 12, 2025

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Vanessa is the first opera to be performed at the Williamstown Festival, running from July 17 through August 3. It will be produced by Heartbeat Opera, a company known for revitalizing underperformed masterpieces and breathing new life into opera’s  staples.

Heartbeat’s music directors, Jacob Ashworth and Dan Schlosberg, will collaborate on the production, with Schlosberg crafting a new arrangement. The opera has been pared down to five characters, sharpening its emotional focus and intensity. As with many Heartbeat productions, the new take on the music reveals fresh textures,  jazzy beats crop up without compromising the integrity of the original score.

The production is directed by R. B. Schlather, whose imaginative stagings of Handel operas at Hudson Hall have earned widespread acclaim. For Berkshire residents, Vanessa offers a chance to experience Schlather’s visionary direction closer to home. The dynamic energy of Heartbeat combined with Schlather’s instinct for immediacy promises to take Vanessa over the top with pleasure.  Nikos Psacharopoulos would love this new step into the future.

The opera was composed by Samuel Barber, with a libretto by his life partner, Gian Carlo Menotti.

Menotti described the story this way:

“This is the story of two women, Vanessa and Erika, caught in the central dilemma which faces every human being: whether to fight for one's ideals to the point of shutting oneself off from reality, or compromise with what life has to offer, even lying to oneself for the mere sake of living. Like a sullen Greek chorus, a third woman—the old Grandmother—condemns, by her very silence, the refusal first of Vanessa, then of Erika, to accept the bitter truth that life offers no solution except its own inherent struggle. When Vanessa, in her final eagerness to embrace life, realizes this truth, it is perhaps too late.”

Tickets are available at the Williamstown theatre.