By Johnny Oleksinski

Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Right away I knew something was up at the Civic Opera House on January 5. The lights dimmed and the familiar, soothing British brogue of Lyric Opera principal conductor Sir Andrew Davis boomed its usual, prerecorded message prohibiting the use of cellphones in the Ardis Krainik Theatre. So far, so good. Then Davis announced that a vehicle with the license plate “FLEMING DIVA 1″ was blocking Wacker Drive. Wait, what? Moments later, the sprightly omnipresent voice informed us that a wealthy patron’s mink coat checked in the lobby was still alive. Huh? No, this was not opening night of “La bohème” or “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” or even the closing of “Don Pasquale”; this was “The Second City Guide to the Opera,” another exciting product of the fledgling Lyric Unlimited program. Read the rest of this entry »

Ashley Brown & John Cudia/Photo: Dan Rest

When Renée Fleming was announced as Lyric Opera’s creative consultant in December of 2010, she related that the company would have an “annual commitment to American musical theater” beginning with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” in non-subscription performances in the spring of 2013. Before that production was even out of the box, Lyric recently announced a five-year R & H initiative.

The justification offered for an opera company already straining to present a diversity of operatic repertoire to focus its limited resources on musical theater that is already widely performed and available in other local venues was, according to Fleming, that such works “emphasize our own strengths and also encourage those who love musicals to give opera a try. With classic musicals, the singing is more closely linked with the type of singing that we do here, and Lyric is poised with such resources to do spectacular productions.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Magda Krance

By Johnny Oleksinski

David Adam Moore is an anomaly in the cast of Lyric Opera’s upcoming production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” A baritone who performs regularly with companies around the world, Moore is the only traditional opera singer of the pack, which quite impressively includes Broadway notables Ashley Brown (“Mary Poppins” and Lyric’s “Show Boat”) and John Cudia (“The Phantom of The Opera”), and is directed by Chicago and New York’s shared son, Gary Griffin.

Moore has come to “Oklahoma!” direct from Lyric’s recent, electrifying production of André Previn’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” in which he played Stanley Kowalski during the student performance—a most memorable experience at a company he’s become incredibly fond of. You might expect a guy who regularly inhabits fearsome foes like Stanley and Jud to come across more intimidating than, say, a Curly or a Mitch, but Moore is as pleasant and easygoing as can be. He’s honored to be a part of this production, the first in a five-year series of Rodgers and Hammerstein shows at Lyric, and he doesn’t mind in the least being the only person onstage with an opera background. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Todd Rosenberg

RECOMMENDED

Heavily promoted as two words you don’t hear together very often, i.e., a “mariachi opera,” “Cruzar la Cara de la Luna” [“To cross the face of the moon”] is actually a play with folk songs that happens to be accompanied by a mariachi ensemble. It is not through-composed as a true opera would be, but is more of a Mexican folk musical. It could be considered a zarzuela, the Spanish-language style of operetta with its own traditions and conventions that would actually consider mariachi somewhat lowbrow by comparison.  Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Todd Rosenberg

RECOMMENDED

One of the great difficulties in bringing an iconic contemporary play to the opera house is securing permission from the playwright, without which, an opera is not possible.

In the case of Tennessee Williams, many were interested in writing operas of his plays, particularly “A Streetcar Named Desire,” but these were refused. It wasn’t until over a decade after Williams’ death that his estate agreed to let it happen in what by that time appeared to be primarily a financial rather than an aesthetic consideration.

The restriction was that as much of the actual language of the play be preserved as possible. And there you have the fatal flaw that weighs down “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the opera. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Dan Rest

RECOMMENDED

Verdi’s “Rigoletto” is so popular and done so often that it has become a festering ground for avant-garde directorial concepts that more often than not are bizarrely superimposed over Verdi’s intentions. The Met’s current production, for instance, sets the opera in a Las Vegas casino.

This unit-set production, originally presented in 2006 as a traditional “back to basics” enterprise attempting to in part compensate for a 2000 Christopher Alden production that was off the charts, does an effective job of reminding us why “Rigoletto” remains the beloved work that it is. It has been somewhat rethought by director Stephen Barlow, who is making his Lyric Opera debut. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Dan Rest

By Dennis Polkow

The gargantuan music dramas of Richard Wagner are by and large a world inhabited by gods and heroes ruled by magic and fantasy. The one exception is “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,” Wagner’s single comedy and most life-affirming work that deals with real, down-to-earth people, ordinary citizens who support and maintain the arts.

This is an idea that Wagner had as far back as 1845 when he wrote down most of his own original scenario for “Meistersinger,” but he set it aside for years, only returning when he stalled in his work on the “Ring” cycle after Act I and Act II of “Siegfried.” Wagner would compose “Tristan und Isolde”—which would revolutionize music and develop the expansive chromaticism that he needed to complete the “Ring”—and returned to “Meistersinger” in the intervening years, finishing the piece in 1867. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Dan Rest

RECOMMENDED

Given that it was 1972 when Pier Luigi Pizzi’s sumptuous production of Puccini’s “La bohème” was first presented at Lyric Opera, few would argue that, after countless regular revivals across four decades and scenery that was literally falling apart, it was time for a new production to be seen here. What was surprising was new general director Anthony Freud opting to bring in another traditional and less elegant production from the San Francisco Opera that is itself already almost twenty years old.

The garret of the starving artists of the current production is claustrophobically cramped as it might be in real life, although ironically, the libretto specifies how spacious the attic is. But hey, people don’t sing their way through life, either. Read the rest of this entry »

Though we publish a list of “players” every year, we alternate between those whose accomplishments are most visible on-stage (the artists, last year) and those who wield their influence behind the curtain (this year). Not only does this allow us to consider twice as many people, but it also puts some temporal distance between the lists. So, the last time we visited this cast of characters, two years ago, we were celebrating the end of the Richard M. Daley years in Chicago, fretting over a nation seemingly in the mood for a Tea Party and contemplating the possibility of a Latter Day Saint in the White House. Today, we’ve got a dancer in the mayor’s office, the most prominent Mormons are in a chorus line at the Bank of America Theatre and the Tea Cup runneth dry. Call us cockeyed optimists, but things sure look better from here. And so, meet the folks who, today, bring us the best theater, dance, comedy and opera in the nation.

Written by Zach Freeman, Brian Hieggelke, Sharon Hoyer and Johnny Oleksinski
Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Dan Rest

RECOMMENDED

Although Engelbert Humperdinck’s fairy-tale opera “Hansel and Gretel” has been a beloved Christmas staple around the world for well over a century, it’s been a relative rarity in Chicago, Lyric Opera having staged the work only once in the company’s history.

This beloved masterpiece of late German Romanticism was written for Humperdinck’s nieces with a libretto by his sister and follows the Ludwig Bechstein version of the classic tale rather than the more familiar adaptation by the Brothers Grimm while adding its own distinctively Wagnerian touches.

Gone is the wicked stepmother and there is a much more complicated and realistic relationship between family members drawn here, along with the dark forest being used as a metaphor of a testing ground for finding our own way in life.

Originally a co-production of Lyric Opera with the Welsh National Opera—ironically when current Lyric general manager Anthony Freud was at the helm there, since this bleak but clever Richard Jones production was first seen at Lyric eleven seasons ago—it has been widely seen and praised. In this revival directed by Eric Einhorn, some of the production’s original elements have been muted a bit but without blunting their overall impact. Read the rest of this entry »