LOS ANGELES — Heartbeat Opera is an indie opera company known for radical reworking of classics like Verdi’s “Macbeth,” Bizet’s “Carmen,” and now Beethoven’s “Fidelio” which is stripped down and reimagined as a Black Lives Matter-era a tale of wrongful incarceration, and the struggle for freedom against a corrupt and racist prison system.

Derrell Acon, who plays prison guard Roc in the production being presented on The Broad Stage, said “Fidelio” was the perfect jumping off point for telling the story of America today.

“[The original opera] has been really condensed to platform the Black Lives Matter movement, which I love,” Acon said.

In the Heartbeat Opera’s production, Stan, the main character, is a Black Lives Matter activist wrongly incarcerated by a white supremacist prison warden. Stan’s wife, Leah, attempts to rescue her husband from death in prison. Acon said there is also a layer of generational tension between his character Roc, a prison guard, and the younger Stan.

“We see some of the intra-community relationships that often take place in black culture,” Acon explained. “Where older generations often try to protect younger generations from the systems at play often because they themselves have been victimized by them.”

Heartbeat’s “Fidelio” originally premiered in 2018, but much has happened since then and while the company’s Ethan Heard (who adapts and directs the production) has added in some new English dialogue amidst the German, he said the spirit of Beethoven’s original remains.

“We created this adaptation in 2018, very much as a response to our American moment,” said Heard. “Now, in 2022, I mean, I feel like it’s an even more urgent story to tell.”

One highlight of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” is the “Prisoners’ Chorus” that occurs midway through the opera, which in this production is sung by more than a hundred voices of incarcerated people from six prison choirs from across the Midwest, images of them projected onstage. 

“We are seeing real incarcerated folks in America right now and I think it is more moving than we could have really expected,” Heard said.

Acon and Heard hope their "Fidelio" will attract even non-opera fans and perhaps surprise them with how resonant the opera’s themes remain today.

“It’s productions like this that are crafted with the courage, with the audacity to actually speak on the pulse of what’s happening in the world that I think are going to stand the test of time just in the way 'Fidelio' has, clearly,” Acon said.

Heartbeat Opera’s “Fidelio” for our times, bridging the operatic artistry of the past with the urgency of today.