Friday, June 25th at 7pm Online Film Screening: BREATHING FREE: a visual album Introduction to Opera & Q&A with the Filmmaker Anaiis Cisco and opera singer Derrell Acon Zoom link via https://www.levittlosangeles.org In 2018, Heartbeat collaborated with 100 incarcerated singers in six prison choirs to create a contemporary American Fidelio told through the lens of Black Lives Matter. In 2020 — the year of George Floyd’s murder, a pandemic which ravages our prison population, and the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth — we curated a song cycle, brought to life in vivid music videos, mingling excerpts from Fidelio with Negro Spirituals and songs by Black composers and lyricists, which together manifest a dream of justice, equity... and breathing free. Focusing on Black empowerment in the arts, this song cycle film features excerpts from Beethoven’s Fidelio, Negro Spirituals, and songs by Harry T. Burleigh, Florence Price, Langston Hughes, Anthony Davis, and Thulani Davis.