Top 5 Shows
“Desire Under the Elms,” Goodman
“Blackbird,” Victory Gardens
“South Pacific,” Lincoln Center Theater
“The Tempest,” Steppenwolf
“Spring Awakening,” Broadway In Chicago 
—Brian Hieggelke

Top 5 Shows
“The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” Victory Gardens/Teatro Vista
“An Apology For the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening,” Theater Oobleck
“The Pillowman,” Redtwist
“Frat,” The New Colony
“Red Noses,” Strawdog
—Nina Metz Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

A Lyric Opera donor cancelled his subscription a couple of seasons ago, and wrote across his cancellation that when Lyric starts paying serious attention to opera as a current art form, he would consider reinstating his subscription and his donations.  Even over at Chicago Opera Theater, which has always been more adventurous than Lyric, you usually get a single twentieth-century opera in a three-opera season and, this year, that opera was almost forty years old.

Enter Chicago Opera Vanguard, a new presenter in the City’s ever-evolving cultural landscape that is climaxing its inaugural season (called season 0) of cutting-edge opera with the long-overdue Chicago premiere of British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s transposition of the Oedipus myth to the Margaret Thatcher era, “Greek.”  Based on the 1980 Stephen Berkoff play of the same name and commissioned by Hans Werner Henze for the Munich Biennale Festival, Turnage’s operatic treatment is the work that established his reputation as the wunderkind of British new music, a reputation that would later propel him across the Atlantic to become a Chicago Symphony Orchestra composer-in-residence in 2006. Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew Worth and Jennifer Johnson/Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

No one is going to confuse Benjamin Britten’s “Owen Wingrave” with his setting of “The Turn of the Screw,” that’s for sure. Although both are based on Henry James novellas, “Screw” is not only better known as a work in and of itself, but Britten’s music for the work is more accessible. “Wingrave” is a late Britten piece: so late, in fact, that it was written for television, a medium that barely existed when Britten was writing his early operas. Britten was old, ill and was considered old-fashioned and was therefore experimenting with different musical styles and techniques, including the use of musical “cells” that would become the trademark of Minimalism, and 12-tone technique which serves to give “Wingrave” some of its ambiguous sound, although the work never leaves tonality altogether. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Harris Theater:

MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV, LANG LANG, CHRISTOPH ESCHENBACH, STEPHEN SONDHEIM, EVELYN GLENNIE AND KATHLEEN BATTLE HEADLINE HARRIS THEATER FOR MUSIC AND DANCE 2009-2010 HARRIS THEATER PRESENTS SEASON

SIXTH SEASON AT THE HARRIS FEATURES CHICAGO PREMIERES, HARRIS THEATER DEBUTS AND EXTRAORDINARY ARTISTS

SUBSCRIPTION AND TICKET PRICES REDUCED

CHICAGO, May 6, 2009 – The Harris Theater for Music and Dance today announced its Harris Theater Presents 2009-2010 season.  The schedule of Harris Theater Presents events features nine programs, a remarkable thirteen Chicago premieres and includes an impressive and diverse selection of music, dance and conversation by internationally acclaimed artists and ensembles. Highlights of the Harris Theater Presents 2009-2010 season include a rare opportunity to see Mikhail Baryshnikov in a solo dance performance, an evening of insight with the “Master of the Musical,” Stephen Sondheim, the Harris debut of Lang Lang under the baton of his mentor Maestro Christoph Eschenbach, the Chicago premiere of Orquestra de São Paulo with virtuoso percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, Kathleen Battle’s unusual program of holiday spirituals, and much more. Read the rest of this entry »

Noah Stewart and Sandra Piques Eddy/Photo: Liz Lauren

Bizet’s “Carmen” is the one opera that everybody knows, even those who have never been in an opera house.  Thanks to countless parodies, cartoons, sitcoms, plays, movies, commercials and the like, its infectious melodies bring an instant nod of recognition from even the greenest of operatic novices.  How then, to justify Peter Brook’s “La Tragédie de Carmen,” a truncated version that dumps half the music and drama, cuts the chorus, most of the orchestra, most of the characters and rearranges and reorders what little is left?  In short, everything that makes “Carmen” the grandest of grand operas goes missing here.  Clocking in at a single intermissionless act less than eighty minutes long, the only thing not cut is the title, which has bizarrely been expanded, but which could more accurately be called “Carmen remix.”  The fact that the most uplifting musical moment came when the fourteen-piece chamber orchestra was silent and a canned version of the familiar fully orchestrated “Carmen” Overture that usually starts the opera came blasting from the Harris Theater sound system towards the climax was the most persuasive argument for the emptiness of this exercise.  Sure, this version allows companies of limited resources and audiences with limited attention spans the opportunity to experience a Cliffs Notes “Carmen,” but we have come to expect so much more challenging fare from Chicago Opera Theater that I found myself genuinely puzzled by why this was being done.  Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

You would think that Mozart’s “La clemenza di Tito” (“the clemency of Titus”)—a work overflowing with the mature Mozart at his very best, completed and premiered less than three months before his death at the height of his creative genius—would be one of the most performed operas in the repertoire, much like his soon to follow “The Magic Flute.”  Like the “Requiem” that would also soon follow but which he left incomplete due to his sudden death at the age of 35, “clemenza” is not 100 percent Mozart, but for a very different reason: Mozart took the work as a commission and farmed out the recitative sections to a student.  This, taken with the fact that the form of the work is the older, more serious and sterile opera seria—which Mozart had not explored since “Idomeneo” and which lacked the wit and ensembling of his popular stage works—critics widely assumed that he didn’t care for the form or the work.  The glorious music itself, however, makes it clear that a real gem was carelessly tossed aside. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is the press release from Chicago Opera Theater:

CHICAGO OPERA THEATER ANNOUNCES THEIR
2010 SPRING FESTIVAL SEASON

Featuring Frederica von Stade in the Chicago premiere of Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers, the 2008 People’s Opera winner Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto, and the Chicago professional premiere of Cavalli’s Giasone! Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew Polenzani and Erin Wall/Photo: Dan Rest

Once upon a time, the principal responsibility of the director of an operatic production was to make sure that the singers didn’t bump into one another or the scenery on stage.  Then, came the idea of the “concept” director where a novel idea—whether inspired or not, whether logical or not—ruled the day.  It became increasingly commonplace for stage directors to add operas to their resumes, even if said director was not particularly musical and even if the staging had nothing whatsoever to do with the music.  Oh well, at least the drama of the piece would be served, or so it was reasoned.  Very, very rarely, you end up with operatic direction that somehow misses the point of both the music and the drama, no small feat, given the odds of some aspect of one or the other working out even with a clueless director.  Such is the case with Lyric Opera’s new production of Mozart’s “The Abduction from the Seraglio.” Read the rest of this entry »

By William Scott

For quite some time if you have wanted legit opera in Chicago you have had two choices. Lyric Opera of Chicago and Chicago Opera Theater are the big boys in town and they hold quite the monopoly.  Though both companies produce acclaimed work, if you are looking for something contemporary, options dry up.  Oh sure, you will see the occasional Benjamin Britten or John Adams opera by one company or the other, but  both primarily present in traditional formats.  Enter Eric Reda and Chicago Opera Vanguard.

“I am excited to present a whole new experience for Chicago lovers of music, theater and opera,” explains artistic director Reda. COV’s mission is to create a Midwest home for engaging opera  and music theater with contemporary resonance.  Reda’s philosophies are simple:  be open to anything, start with good text and deliver a musical experience that resonates with an audience.  To be sure, he understands that the quality of the music experience will largely be the stick by which the company is measured.

“My collaborators and I talk a lot about what is it that we can do to make opera more viable,” Reda says.  He goes on, “Why does it have to be a museum piece? It’s time to start revitalizing this form.  Funding is going down for it and it’s like looking at a pretty picture that looks really great in a gallery but it has no immediate impact.”

The company got its feet off the ground with several minor productions and concerts, most notably, the recent evening of art songs  (most of them newly commissioned) called “The Chicago AIDS Quilt Songbook” at the Court Theatre.  The concert went to support Seasons of Concern, the Chicago theater community’s fundraising effort to fight against AIDS.  Now the young company embarks on an important milestone for any organization, its first full season.

Season zero for COV will bring two productions.  In May they will produce “GREEK,” a modern Oedipus myth set in a Britain afflicted by “a plague of racism, violence and mass unemployment” written by Mark-Anthony Turnage and Jonathan Moore.  The show promises plenty of bad language and a sixteen-piece orchestra.  But first, this week COV will open with a piece that has been making the rounds to major producing institutions nationwide, Ricky Ian Gordon’s “Orpheus and Euridice.”

Gordon’s song cycle is written for a soprano voice (Euridice), a clarinet (Orpheus) and a piano.  Rebecca Prescott and Patrick Rehker will perform the title roles respectively. Two dancers, Logan Vaughn and Matthew Prescott, will accompany the piece, embodying the emotional journey of the title lovers.

Although based on an ancient myth, if the piece feels intensely personal that is because it is. Gordon wrote the piece as a tribute to his lover, who died of AIDS in 1996.   The libretto poured out of him one night during a particularly rough period in his partner’s sickness.  The writer knew this was something large and special.

“I didn’t quite realize what I was doing. It was born out of my need to tell my own story at the time,” Gordon recounts. ”Pretty soon I realized I had not only written about the birth of love but I had written about the birth of art through suffering.  It was so intense.”

Reda is counting on that innate intensity to create a loud and visible start for COV.  Gordon’s work is largely accepted by more traditional opera goers—in fact the writer did a residency at the Lyric—but he works within a new school of composers who are struggling to keep the operatic form living in the often rigid confines of the established industry.

COV will need the support  of non-traditional opera goers.  An alternative warehouse venue like the AV-Aerie may help.  Costumes by local design celebrity and “Project Runway” contestant Steven Rosengard may also go a long way to reaching out.  But Reda also sees the economic climate as a possible advantage.

“Part of what we have been saying all along is in making new work accessible, it is important to also make them economically accessible,” Reda says.  Good seats to the bigger houses can cost upward of $100.  COV memberships are $50 for both shows.

“I feel like right now in economically tough times people are still starved for cultural entertainment. I feel we are a viable alternative,” Reda says. “Why not make a home where you can be one of a hundred people in a hall listening to really great music theater.”

“Orpheus and Euridice” plays the AV-Aerie, 2000 W. Fulton, January 29-February 9, chicagovanguard.org

What makes Chicago’s theater world special? We picked up the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly for clues. In the cover story, “CSI” star William Petersen explains his decision to leave his role as one of the top paid actors in television, earning a rumored $600,000 an episode, to move back to Chicago and Chicago theater: “It was too safe for me at this point. So I needed to try and break that, and the way to do that, for me, is the theater.” EW went on to credit Petersen for much of the show’s success, notably bringing a theatrical ensemble philosophy to play in its production. Or consider the runaway success of Steppenwolf’s “August: Osage County,” which transferred to Broadway,  receiving critical acclaim and multiple Tony Awards, not by shaking it up with Broadway “names” but instead by virtually transferring the Steppenwolf production intact, with the addition of lead producer and fellow Chicagoan Steve Traxler. What makes Chicago theater—or for that matter, Chicago dance or any other form of performance practiced on our stages—special? We’d contend it’s the power of the ensemble, the spirit of collaboration that champions artistic risk-taking and subordinates the commercial. And so, in that spirit, the critical ensemble responsible for Newcity’s ongoing stage coverage presents our take on the most influential people on and offstage in Chicago. Read the rest of this entry »