#save ethan weiners

[blueredbulls]

the amount of things that could've been prevented if people EXPLAINED THEMSELVES FIRST!!!

[theeddiewarnerstory]

Buzziest Books of the Year | 2019

Buzziest Books of the Year | 2019

2019 has been an incredibly exciting year for new novels and we wanted to celebrate by sharing our top ten list for buzziest books of the year! Whether your a fan of mystery, romance, literary fiction, science fiction, or memoir, we think we’ve got a little something for everyone. Sit back and enjoy our picks for the best books of 2019!

The Silent Patient

by Alex Michaelides

Release Date: February 5, 2019

This thriller was an instant #1 New York Times Bestseller from debut author Alex Michaelides…Everything was seemingly perfect for Alicia Berenson. She is a famous painter and married to an in-demand fashion photographer. She lives in a grand house in one of Londons most desirable areas. Then one evening she shoots her husband five times in the face and never speaks another word. Her refusal to talk turns this domestic tragedy into a mystery that captures public attention and casts Alicia into notoriety.

Buy on Amazon

City of Girls

by Elizabeth Gilbert

Release Date: June 4, 2019

The year is 1940 and nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out Vassar College for her poor performance in her freshman year. He parents send her to live with her aunt in Manhattan. Her aunt owns the flamboyant but crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse. Here Vivian is introduced to an interesting array of characters. When she makes a mistake that turns into a professional scandal, her world turns upside down.

Buy on Amazon

The Testaments

by Margaret Atwood

Release Date: September 10, 2019

The sequel to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian masterpiece, The Handmaid’s Tale… Fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale the Republic of Gilead regime maintains its grip on power. But it may be starting to rot from within. Follow three very different women as their lives converge.

Buy on Amazon

The Unhoneymooners

by Christina Lauren

Release Date: May 14, 2019

Olive Torres is always the unlucky twin and her life is almost comically jinxed. To contrast this, her sister Ami is a champion. She even managed to finance her wedding by winning a slew of contests. The only thing worse for Olive than her constant bad luck is having to spend the wedding day with the best man… her nemesis, Ethan Thomas.

Buy on Amazon

Olive, Again

by Elizabeth Strout

Release Date: October 15, 2019

The new novel from New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout… Olive, Again follows the life of beloved Olive Kitteridge. Olive is struggling to understand not only herself but the lives of everyone around her in the town of Crosby, Maine. “Strout managed to make me love this strange woman I’d never met, who I knew nothing about. What a terrific writer she is.”—Zadie Smith.

Buy on Amazon

The Institute

by Stephen King

Release Date: September 10, 2019

On a quiet suburban street in Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Elis’s parents and he is loaded into a black SUV. In the morning he wakes up at The Institute. He is in a room that looks just like his own but with no windows. Outside his door are other doors, all that have other kids… kids with special talents.

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The Water Dancer

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Release Date: September 4, 2019

The new book from the National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates… Hiram Walker’s mother was sold away when he was very young, he was robbed of all memory of her. But he was gifted a mysterious power. This power saved his life when he almost drowned in a river years later. Hiram’s brush with death spurs a daring scheme… to escape the only home he has ever known.

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Once More We Saw Stars

by Jayson Greene

Release Date: May 14, 2019

The new memoir from Jayson Greene explores the power of love in the face of loss… Two-year-old Greta Greene is sitting with her grandmother on a park bench in Manhattan. Overhead a brick windowsill crumbles and strikes Greta unconscious. Once More We Saw starts with this traumatic moment and the hours leading up to her death. It explores the anguish that Jayson and his wife went through but also dives into a narrative that is more about hope and healing.

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Mrs. Everything

by Jennifer Weiner

Release Date: June 11, 2019

Bethie and Jo Kaufmann were born into a world full of promise. They grew up in a perfect 1950’s Detroit house and their roles in the family were clearly defined. Bethe is the pretty and feminine good girl who dreams of a traditional life. While Jo is a tomboy, a bookish rebel that wants to make the world fairer. But things end up looking very different from what they imagined.

Buy on Amazon

The Guardians

by John Grisham

Release Date: October 15, 2019

A young lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead in his office. There were no clues, no witnesses, and no one with a motive. But somehow the police came to suspect one of his clients, a young black man, Quincy Miller. He was sent to prison for life. He has spent twenty-two years maintaining his innocence while in prison but no one listens. In a desperate move, he reaches out to Guardian Ministries, a nonprofit run by Cullen Post, an Episcopal minister and lawyer.

Buy on Amazon

The post Buzziest Books of the Year | 2019 appeared first on NewInBooks.

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[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2016, Part IV

No, it’s not mid-February, Jack. Part I. Part II. Part III.

GOOD MOVIES

48. Jackie (Pablo Larrain) Pablo Larrain's aesthetic is rooted in the desire to demystify history. For a lot of the movie, I wasn't sure the week after JFK's assassination was history that needed to be demystified. Was it something that deserved more than Larrain's experimentation? Especially after a scene with John Hurt's priest that seemed superficial, after Portman's whispery impression went a bit too far, I didn't believe this game of dress-up.

But the pieces add up, especially the piece that is Mica Levi's score, which establishes the film's eerie intimacy and is one of the year's best. That priest I mentioned comes back for the best scene of the film, one that cements Jackie's role as a shaper of history herself, and he proves that the film deserved my patience. In the end, this is a movie with a real point of view, and I preferred it to the more expected approach. 47. Midnight Special (Jeff Nichols) Especially at the beginning, the mystery of Jeff Nichols' script works really well. People wrote that the film is indebted to early Spielberg, and I think they mean the sense of wonder. But it really has more to do with the way the information is parceled out in the parallel action. Like, a character will know a police call sign for some reason, and fifteen minutes later, when someone asks him what he used to do back home, he'll pause for a few beats and mutter, "State trooper." That doesn't seem like a big deal on paper, but those buttons at the ends of scenes create a lot of momentum. And while most people just see menace or inscrutability in Michael Shannon's square jaw, Nichols keeps capturing love and sacrifice. I don't know what I wanted from the ending, but its power is inversely related to how pompous the movie is about it. The film kind of lost me in the final third, but there's something to be said for a filmmaker who, instead of joining the franchise machine, just decided to make his own version of X-Men. 46. Don’t Think Twice (Mike Birbiglia) After an invigorating and true-to-life first half, Don't Think Twice suffered from insisting on balancing the ensemble. Every character gets a full arc and equal screen time, even though there are at least two that I didn't care about and two that could have been combined. Plus, a character makes a huge romantic leap that I didn't believe at all. But I don't care about those fairly major faults because the film gets the spirit of what it's depicting right. The improv bits are funny, but they're also believable as unwritten bits. Birbiglia's screenplay masters the subtle mixture of pride, envy, joy, and resentment that comes when a friend succeeds in something you can't. It also nails the weary desperation of artists of a certain age. And, thanks to yet another honest, soulful performance from Gillian Jacobs, the film is able to depict the blurry line between contentment and complacency. 45. Wiener (Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg) Weiner is exactly the movie it claims it is, which is sort of at odds with Anthony Weiner's presentation of himself. In other words, it's a straightforward, honest portrayal of a serpentine, dishonest man. Or maybe dishonest isn't quite the right word--though he does lie all the way to the end, even when it's unnecessary. It's more that Weiner convinces himself of things that are untrue. As far as that notion goes, the film is a compelling character study of the type of person who gets into politics in the first place, the specific chemistry of idealism and cynicism that it takes to believe that one man can and should represent everyone in the biggest city in the country. The filmmakers shape that analysis with a tight tragic hero structure to complement his foibles. That shaping is what gives me a little bit of reservation. From the cutesy titles to music cues to their tendency to not shut up, the directors connect a few too many dots for my taste, all to serve a "can you compartmentalize public lives and personal lives?" question that I'm frankly tired of. But if that's the trade-off for capturing the exact, raw moment of Huma Abedin hearing about Carlos Danger for the first time, then it's fine with me. Sydney Leathers is the definition of thirsty. 44. Born to Be Blue (Robert Budreau) It didn't vault the hurdle of greatness for me, becoming more conventional as it went, but Born to Be Blue's conceit worked well. The "starring in a film about himself" idea plays with reality in a sticky way. Unlike something like Miles Ahead, Born to Be Blue gives us enough of what made Chet Baker great that we can see the hole in his life as he tries to overcome addiction and re-teach himself the trumpet. A lesser actor would have found scenes to overplay, but Ethan Hawke's performance is just like Baker's style, "below the center, almost flat." And I mean that as a compliment. Playing most of the film out from a concentrated low point allows it to crest at a bittersweet moment, maybe not the perfect ending for Baker's life, but the perfect ending for this story. The coda of the film states that Baker continued to work "and" remained a heroin addict. Not "but." Budreau goes out on a limb and allows that some of the artist's greatness arose from heroin. Which proves that this is a film interested in learning about the actual man, not excusing away what made him complex.

43. Train to Busan (Yeon Sang-Ho) Have you ever written a sonnet? You have to understand the form before you start writing, and part of the writing is understanding how powerless you are to the form. It's one of the only mediums of art that squelches originality: A great sonnet is one that exemplifies the form, not necessarily one that transcends it. Zombie movies are kind of similar, and Train to Busan gets the form through-and-through. The rules are clear about how people become infected and what the zombies can and can't do. Then we meet fully-realized characters, some of whom we're rooting for, some of whom we're not sure about, and some of whom definitely have a bite coming. The economy with which the film makes those divisions is breathtaking. "Oh, he let the girl go ahead of him at the bathroom. Cool guy." "He told that colleague to straighten her tie. He needs to die." The effects are SyFy channel quality, and everything runs a bit long. But the film barely ever missteps. The central character's journey to, ahem, humanity is a familiar one, but it's not like I would want the final couplet of a sonnet in lines three and four. 42. Hacksaw Ridge (Mel Gibson) Mel Gibson stays an auteur of suffering. The first third is imbued with a broad, Capra-esque tone that I didn't respond to but that was definitely consistent and intentional. Of course there's a coda with the real-life Desmond Doss, which makes Hacksaw Ridge another casualty to 2016's worst trend. As an action director, however, Gibson delivers the goods with coherent, visceral conflict. Did I write "action" above? Because what I meant was "violence." Like all other Mel Gibson films, Hacksaw Ridge is marked by nearly pornographic violence. He gets the post-Saving Private Ryan irony of war, and he stages Japanese seppuku with almost the same reverence as American sacrifice. After an hour of environments that Doss can grasp or control, the horror and chaos of war hits even harder. (One of the most gruesome moments comes in an extraneous nightmare sequence, the epitome of an uncontrollable scenario.) And after Doss has been hurt himself, after the stigmata on his rope-burned hands, after the ablution with water, after the shot that makes his descent on a stretcher look like an ascent to heaven--only then can he be redeemed. 41. Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier) As tense as it is realistic, Green Room does the hard work of developing the central band's dynamics before allowing all hell to break loose once that band is pushed. There isn't a wasted scene in the first half, and the characters and location seem lived-in and authentic. As the film became more grisly in its second half, it lost a bit of my interest. Part of it is that Saulnier isn't yet a skilled director of action, and part of it is that his script is trying so hard to be subtle that it sometimes sacrifices clarity. I'm of the minority opinion that he botched the ending of Blue Ruin, and I'll be of the minority opinion that he botched the ending here. (Excellent closing metaphorical note with the dog though.) Still, it's rare to see thrillers with such organic escalation of stakes and such committed performances.  40. How to Be Single (Christian Ditter) There's some good old-fashioned joke-telling going on here, and I laughed a lot. The film is light enough on its feet to be freewheeling in one scene and emotionally bare in the next. More notably, it finishes with the message that not everyone's happiness comes from romantic relationships, which is a refreshing note. Like many ensemble films of its type, it occasionally drops a character for way too long and treats that ellipsis as growth. And I would say that I want Rebel Wilson to do something different, but that's just kind of a nice way of saying that I want Rebel Wilson to go away. The rest of the cast, including potential Movie Star Dakota Johnson and undeniable Movie Star Jake Lacy, is aces. 39. Mustang (Deniz Gamze Erguven) At first I thought that the approach was too broad for what the film was trying to explore, but then it got more heartbreaking with each minute. The comparisons to The Virgin Suicides are obvious, (For my money, Coppola's film is a more lush and meditative work of art than Mustang ever is.) but there's a unique desperation at play here. Erguven's camera produces so much empathy that I felt active patriarchal shame when characters were asking to see a sheet stained with a girl's hymen blood on her (arranged) wedding night. That being said, I wish the film had ended two minutes earlier, on a note of tonal false security, rather than a note of narrative false security.

38. Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman) The marriage of Whit Stillman and Jane Austen makes almost too much sense because the pleasures of both of their works are entirely verbal. If you look up "droll" in the dictionary, it's Stillman giving Austen a behind-hug while she takes a selfie. The difference is that Austen uses superficiality as a jab, and it sets the reader up for a piercing moment of emotion. Think Darcy's proposal or (wink wink wink wink wink) Cher realizing that she loves Josh. Stillman never really gets there; he's content with the characters' vapidity, even if that vapidity is hilarious for the entire runtime. Beckinsale has been fighting werewolves for so long that it's easy to forget how enchanting she is. She slips right back into Stillman's rhythms, and the void of compassion that is Lady Susan might as well be an ancestor to Last Days of Disco's Charlotte. However, the real find is Tom Bennett, who plays Sir James Martin, a man labeled in one of Stillman's opening tableaux as "a bit of a rattle." Bennett fidgets on the periphery of each room, throwing in a silly walk, congratulating an author on writing "in both poetry and verse." Martin's motivations are simpler than any other character's, but Bennett does so much with the role. 37. Triple 9 (John Hillcoat) The rest of the movie never climbs back to the level of the gripping opening, but the exhilaration doesn't get that much lower either. Triple 9 is a bit overstuffed for its running time--there are actually two ingenious plots being developed when either one would have been enough. So sometimes you scratch your head about a connection that is most likely on the cutting room floor. But dammit if there aren't some actors punching way under their weight classes. (I'm particularly enjoying this stage of Kate Winslet's career, which I call "Yeah. Why not? I have bills.") A cast like this lifts the screenplay's twists because you end up going, "They're going to kill off X? Well, yeah, I guess it's him or that other famous person." In one of the filmmakers' smartest moves, Triple 9 takes place in Atlanta, avoiding other productions' habit of taking the city's tax credits and having it stand in for some other metropolis. The locations feel gritty and lived-in, and Casey Affleck provides a credible Georgia accent, not just a generic American South. John Hillcoat, a director I've been lukewarm on, isn't slumming it just because this is a genre picture. 36. Little Men (Ira Sachs) The best thing that Ira Sachs's films have going for them is that there are no good or bad guys. Here we have more characters trying to do the right thing and trying their best to get by. (The pet theme of gentrification is back as well.) Greg Kinnear nails two big moments, but the problem is that the kids are the main characters. And, not to be mean to pre-teen actors, the proceedings are kind of limited by their performances. One of the boys in the film might be gay--he's still figuring it out--and the between-the-lines writing of that idea is way better than the execution of it. It's unclear whether Sacks worked out the levels of camaraderie versus attraction versus confusion with the boys, and I think the overall piece suffers for it, though it is a type of character we don't see even halfway articulated enough. 35. Dheepan (Jacques Audiard) We've seen many films about surrogate families or adopted families whose members, against all odds, come together because they need one another. How about a loose, unofficial family that doesn't work? The adults never fall in love. The kid never feels protected or safe. No one is responsible for anyone else. Dheepan isn't as depressing as that might sound, but it is a slice-of-life that is exactly that matter-of-fact. As usual, Audiard excels with detail: He gets the daily challenges of immigration right. "Oh, people alphabetize by last name in this country, not by first name. How was I supposed to know that?" Some, uh, important stuff happens at the end--there's an almost Taxi Driver-like switch that gets flipped for Dheepan--but I needed more dots to be connected before that. I didn't want the characters' devolutions telegraphed, but I would like to trace them after the fact. 34. Blue Jay (Alexandre Lehmann) A modest but haunting production, expertly acted, that resists any temptation to go bigger and more movie-like until...the revelation that does just that. 33. The Wailing (Na Hong-Jin) Let's say you're watching a movie, and something bizarre happens, then the film cuts to a guy bolting upright in bed. It was all a nightmare, right? You've been taught to disregard the previous scene because it didn't actually happen. What The Wailing's style presupposes is...maybe it did, and the guy waking up is just an unrelated new scene? I spent most of the first hour wondering if I was even watching The Wailing correctly, and the destabilizing elements extend to the tone and the characters. In the way it threads the needle between scary and silly, the fluid tone reminded me of Bong Joon-Ho's Mother, to do that condescending thing in which a critic compares two movies from the same country. Do Won Kwak's police officer ends up trying on heroism, but for the first half he's a guy whose daughter has to meet him at the station with dry clothes. Eventually though, the film leaves the idiosyncrasy for the trappings of any other supernatural thriller. Granted, it's an artsy supernatural thriller--the cross-cutting exorcism sequence is a stunner--but the last leg of the film drags and amounts to something disappointingly literal. 32. Maggie’s Plan (Rebecca Miller) The characters of Rebecca Miller's script are all academics and, in quite a shocker, she treats them like the intelligent people they are. There's some farce here and some bad decisions, but they're decisions founded on smart people's accurate self-reflection. Couple that with a three-year flash forward as audacious as it is effective, and this is a nice surprise. Bill Hader's character is ye ol' screenplay's sounding board flatline, and Maya Rudolph is wasted even more. As far as the leads go, Julianne Moore's performance feels too broad, and I started to wonder, for the first time, if Greta Gerwig is a better actress than even the best actress on Earth.

31. Tower (Keith Maitland) There's quite a bit of novelty at work here. Maitland uses animation to recreate events of fifty years ago in a way that I never even really imagined could be done. By interviewing subjects, iPhoneing the (largely unchanged) setting, and rotoscoping over those backgrounds, it's as if the younger version of those people are going through that harrowing day all over again. When the novelty wears off, however, I don't think the film asserts enough. There's the montage of all the other mass shootings at the end, but too much of that connection--this as the day we lost our innocence--is implied. Charles Whitman is never shown, and his name comes up only twice. But by making him a faceless madman, Maitland might be over-simplifying the issue. I feel bad for pointing that out since this is a wholly compelling, admirable film that just didn't cross  over into greatness for me. It pushes the genre forward. 30. Don’t Breathe (Fede Alvarez) After a refreshingly economical setup (being set in Detroit adds automatic desperation), Don't Breathe is Pure Cinema through the night vision-y sequence. Especially if you read Rocky's family member as a daughter, not a sister--as I do--the characters' motivations come through loud and clear, preparing us for a breathless (ha ha) and visually confident second act. I would say that Fede Alvarez shows promise, but that sounds too underhanded for something that actually is a cashing-in accomplishment.The rest is fine. Something happens at the hour mark that was ballsy, then the screenplay kind of backtracked on it. And I'm far from Mr. Identity Politics, but how much more interesting would it have been if the Hispanic kid with cornrows was the calculating one whose dad owned a security company, the girl was the destructive hothead with criminal connections, and the White guy was the young parent with the terrible homelife? As opposed to the way it is, the matching quiz that you totally just aced. 29. The Nice Guys (Shane Black) With its crackly dialogue, west coast cynicism, and convoluted plot, The Nice Guys is a typical Shane Black film at a time when a typical Shane Black film is what we need most. If only it took place during Christmas time. Black sifts in ideas about alcoholism and What It Means to Be a Good Person; bystanders get clipped by stray bullets to remind us that the violence has actual consequences. But still, perhaps because the left turns and reversals are so relentless, the film feels a bit weightless by the end. Is it wrong for me to think this role as some sort of arch greyhound is Ryan Gosling's best performance? Even though I've loved him in the same pictures everyone else loved him in and some of the ones no one loved him in? He has to shoulder acting nightmares, like pretending to be drunk, and entire sequences depend upon his physical comedy. For most of the movie, it's unclear if Holland March is even good at his job, but there Gosling is crafting a character from the very first time we see him, crawling to catch a phone that stops ringing just as he gets there. It's not an easy role--somehow both adrift and paternal--but he attacks it with expressive, exuberant invention. He does everything shy of singing and dancing, and he does that in a film higher up on this list. 28. Sing Street (John Carney) It's nothing we haven't seen before--in fact, John Carney is remaking his own films in pretty clear ways--but Sing Street is a delight. The film is set in 1985, and its pre-Internet inspirations really suit Carney's optimism and the characters' guilelessness. The film is built upon the sort of serendipity and inspiration that is exempt from the anxiety of influence that a bunch of kids starting a band would have today. I could have done without so much of the performance in the school gym (about ten minutes could be shaved off easily), but both the romance and the big brother relationship rang true for me. Sing Street is the perfect version of what Carney has been trying to do all along. Now pick something else please. 27. De Palma (Noah Baumbach, Jake Paltrow) The more demanding part of me wants to say, "No, tell me more about when you tailed your own father as he was having an affair! Tell me more before moving on so breezily." But that would be discounting how candid De Palma actually is in, professionally at least, this insular, warts-and-all retrospective. He's honest about his work experiences, ("Cliff Robertson was terrible to work with.") his own limitations, ("I don't care for car chases. I'm not a car guy.") and the direction of cinema ("So what do you get? Visual cliches.") If nothing else, it feels like a privilege to see some of these indelible images on the big screen when I hadn't before. More importantly perhaps, the film doubles as a portrait of a time when artists were allowed to make mistakes. De Palma's a survivor, but in the high stakes corporate hellscape of global entertainment, that's a privilege. 26. Pervert Park (Frida Barkfors, Lasse Barkfors) Many people who are upset about current events are using movies as palliative care: a silly comedy or a mindless horror film to numb one from the horrors of daily life. I went the other way on the night after the election: a haunting, brutal documentary about the ugly depths of cycles of abuse. Pervert Park is a lean film marked by candid interviews with sex offenders. Those interviews are unpleasant, sometimes because of the selfish, misguided, even evil betrayals that the subjects committed. Sometimes because of the miscarriage of justice lurking on the margins of the piece. But if nothing else, the film teaches us that these are people, not monsters, who deserve dignity even if they took it away from someone else. I wanted more at times; a few of the subjects don't feel fleshed out, even though they reveal a damning amount already. But the saddest part is that the people who need to see this movie, the ones making policy about mental health and recovery, will not see it. So I'm back at being upset.

25. The Birth of a Nation (Nate Parker) (Yeah. What up?) The Birth of a Nation was independently financed, but it does what the best studio films used to: It rousingly hits its beats with power that is two parts sincere and one part overdetermined. It's far from perfect. There's a bit of me-first filmmaking, light streaming through slats type of stuff, and the less magic realism the better for me at this point. Maybe the final fifteen minutes are padded, and a crucial scene, in which Nat explains his plan, strains to connect the dots between his equanimity and rage. But Nat is more complex than he would have been in most hands, burdened by the same things that free him. Furthermore, the element of the film that feels new and sophisticated is his relationship with Samuel Turner, the slave master he has known since childhood. The two have an uneasy dynamic that they refuse to talk about; they would even be friends if, you know, Samuel didn't deny Nat's fundamental humanity. (The relationship is made more tenuous, of course, by--spoilers for history--the fact that Nat will eventually kill Samuel.) In what might be the first time I've bought him, Armie Hammer plays that plantation owner, who dances on the edge of benevolence but is capable of real hatred. He believes he isn't "one of the bad ones," but he has justification after justification for why Black anger, not White oppression, is the problem. It's one of the pieces that is meant to resonate sharply in 2016--like almost everything else, it's pushed right to the edge without feeling forced. 24. Gleason (J. Clay Tweel) There are a few times in the film when Steve Gleason and his wife Michel say that, rather than sainthood, they're just striving for authenticity and honesty. That's what this documentary is aiming for as well. I could probably nitpick, especially with the opening's stock footage or Scott Fujita's guyliner, but the film is founded on raw emotion and delivers with rare intimacy. I should note: I'm a recent father, and I know this film was poignant for me in a way that it wouldn't have been even a year ago. The closest antecedent for Gleason is Life Itself, but as articulate as Roger Ebert was about his illness, he didn't also have a baby to raise, a father to spar with, and as acute an awareness of the moments passing him by.

[writemarcus]

Fidelio

Heartbeat Opera Company Movement Directed by Emma Jaster

Music by Ludwig van Beethoven Original libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner & Georg Friedrich Sonnleithner Adapted and Directed by Ethan Heard Arranged and Music Directed by Daniel Schlosberg New English Dialogue Co-Written by Marcus Scott and Ethan Heard

A black activist is wrongfully incarcerated. His wife, Leah, disguises herself to infiltrate the system and free him. But when injustice reigns, one woman's grit may not be enough to save her love. Featuring the voices of imprisoned people, this daring adaptation pits corruption against courage, hate against hope.

Heartbeat Opera's FIDELIO

https://www.heartbeatopera.org/fidelio 

Music by Ludwig van Beethoven Original libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner & Georg Friedrich Sonnleithner 

Directed and Adapted by Ethan Heard 

Arranged and Music Directed by Daniel Schlosberg 

New English Dialogue Co-Written by Marcus Scott & Ethan Heard 

Supertitles translation by Nick Betson 

Featuring Kelly Griffin as Lee and Malorie Casimir as Marcy and the voices of more than 100 incarcerated singers and 70 volunteers from six prison choirs: 

Oakdale Community Choir, Iowa Medical and Classification Center Director & Founder: Mary L. Cohen

KUJI Men’s Chorus, Marion Correctional Institution, Ohio Director: Catherine Roma 

UBUNTU Men’s Chorus, London Correctional Institution, Ohio Director: Catherine Roma

HOPE Thru Harmony Women’s Choir, Dayton Correctional Institution, Ohio Director: Catherine Roma

East Hill Singers, Lansing Correctional Facility, Kansas Conductor: Kirk Carson

Voices of Hope, Minnesota Correctional Facility, Shakopee, Minnesota Conductor: Amanda Weber

Piano 1/Conductor // Daniel Schlosberg

Piano 2 // Euntaek Kim 

Horn 1 // Laura Weiner 

Horn 2 // Nicolee Kuester 

Cello 1 // Clare Monfredo 

Cello 2 // Daniel Hass

Percussion // Ben Cornavaca

Movement Direction // Emma Crane Jaster 

Set Design // Reid Thompson 

Costume Design // Valérie Therese Bart 

Hair & Makeup Design // Jon Carter

Sound Design // Kate Marvin

Projection Design // Nicholas Hussong, Paul Lieber, and Joey Moro

Stage Manager // Jakob W. Plummer 

Recorded in performance at Baruch Performing Arts Center, May 2018

PRESS for Fidelio

I nearly missed Heartbeat Opera’s “Fidelio” — reorchestrated, reduced and reimagined for the era of Black Lives Matter — and I’m so glad I didn’t. The production, staged smartlyin a subterranean theater at the Baruch Performing Arts Center that already had the look of a concrete correctional facility, deftly navigated the tricky art of adaptation with new English-language dialogue (alongside Beethoven’s arias in the original German) that felt urgent and powerful without pontificating. Even the moment that most risked heavy-handedness, the Prisoners’ Chorus performed by real American prison choirs on video, turned out to be one of the most poignant. Have a listen, though be warned: The scene left me searching for tissues. -The New York Times

Imaginatively deconstructed and reconceived. Ingenious seven-player arrangements...[with] artful transitions. Thoughtfully adapted and directed by Ethan Heard. Precise. The most powerful scene was the prisoners’ chorus, which was performed by 100 incarcerated men and women and 70 volunteers from six prison choirs. They were seen on pre-recorded video as well as heard, and their amateur but committed music-making brought real life into the theater. Kelly Griffin was an imposingly passionate Leah, carrying off “Abscheulicher!” with authority; Malorie Casimir was brightly innocent as Marcy. -The Wall Street Journal

"High brow and brilliant." -New York Magazine, Approval Matrix

Fearless work that was somehow true to the original yet very current. The powerful use of a chorus of prisoners--represented in the production by projected work of actual prison choruses from around the Midwest--was a master stroke. I thought Ethan Heard's production was more successful than the opera's most recent revival at the Met. Kelly Griffin made an incisive Leah, powerful yet warm, and Malorie Casimir was a winning Marcy, using her light voice smartly, while bass-baritone Derrell Acon made a dignified, smart Roc. -Broadway World

Powerful. Adapted and directed by Ethan Heard, this version peels back the operatic trappings to let the characters emerge. Kelly Griffin jerked tears and kicked butt as Leah, and Derrell Acon gave the compromised flunky Roc some very human ambivalence about doing terrible things to defenseless people. Heartbeat’s Fidelio follows the intertwined grand traditions of miniaturized opera, biting updates, and shoestring spectacle, yet still produced something serious and new. -Vulture

Both productions [Heartbeat's Fidelio and Don Giovanni] feature stellar young casts in exciting, stripped-down productions that burn brightly both musically and theatrically. But perhaps the strongest vocal performance was given by men who were not actually there in the theater, and who could not be because they are incarcerated in prisons across the country. One of the most famous parts of Beethoven's opera is a prisoners' chorus. In a brilliant theatrical stroke, director Ethan Heard and co-musical director Daniel Schlosberg travelled to prisons in Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, and Minnesota that had mens' choruses, where they taught the singers the chorus, then had it recorded and videotaped. So on the back wall was projected a video of the inmates singing while their voices filled the theater. It was a deeply stirring moment that palpably resonated with the audience. (Letters from these real prisoners to Heartbeat were posted in the lobby of the theater.)" -Feast of Music

Stunning, moving, and critically important. The adaptation was truly brilliant, in all the different subtle and not-so-subtle ways that it modernized Fidelio, especially along gender and sexuality, racial, and political and ethical dimensions." -Bernard E. Harcourt, Professor of Law and Political Science at Columbia University, Executive Director of the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights