Darren Criss (#4) with Team StarKid

With our criteria shifted back to artistic accomplishment in theater, dance, comedy and opera this year, our task got infinitely tougher. Because while the number of performing venues grows at a steady rate, the increase in the number of noteworthy artists seems to grow exponentially. For everyone we name on the list below, we had to leave off five, an embarrassment of riches for Chicago. We made a conscious effort to introduce a meaningful number of new faces to the list this year; the necessary absences should not be construed as a loss of worthiness as a consequence. We often find trends when we do the research these lists require; this year we’re starting to see a more meaningful effort to redefine performance itself in the internet age, from the runaway success of StarKids, to the more calculated endeavors of Silk Road. So what defines a “player”? Consider it some complex stew of career achievement, recent “heat” and, in some cases, rising stardom.

Written by Zach Freeman, Brian Hieggelke, Sharon Hoyer and Dennis Polkow

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Charles Castronovo/Photo: Dan Rest

RECOMMENDED

The perfect Mozart opera? Most would pick “The Marriage of Figaro,” some “Don Giovanni,” perhaps a handful even “Così fan tutte,” all Mozart collaborations with brilliant librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. And yet, for comedy, fantasy and intrigue, “The Magic Flute” has to top the list. A product of those much romanticized last months of his short life, this is Mozart at his most witty, his most charming and at the full height of his soon-to-be-silenced miraculous musical powers.

The memorable August Everding production that Lyric Opera is still using dates back to the mid-1980s and has frankly had more revivals than I can count with casts of various quality levels. After a quarter of a century of use here and elsewhere, apparently some of the pieces could barely be repainted and lighting had to be adjusted to compensate for the age of some of the scenery. If so, this is never obvious in the current revival. Read the rest of this entry »

Amber Wagner, Brandon Jovanovich/Photo: Dan Rest

RECOMMENDED

During the recently ended Bill Mason era at Lyric Opera, the philosophy was that works of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss had to alternate for attention to contain costs of the huge orchestra needed for these works. This year, however, the Strauss opera presented, “Ariadne auf Naxos,” employs a chamber orchestra, yet nonetheless was left to stand as the single season ambassador to represent the vast canvas of German Romanticism.

This production was originally mounted for soprano Deborah Voigt, who had sung the role here in 1998 and was to have sung this revival, “Ariadne” being one of her signature roles. However, soon after a Chicago Symphony concert over the summer spotlighting Strauss and Wagner roles associated with her where Voigt was having obvious vocal trouble, she abruptly withdrew from these performances with a statement that she was “focusing increasingly on dramatic soprano roles and thus has decided to drop the part from [her] repertory for the time being.” Read the rest of this entry »

Susanna Phillips/Photo: Dan Rest

It is telling that in a series of promotional videos that Lyric Opera music director Sir Andrew Davis and creative consultant Renée Fleming made to promote the new season, Davis admits that he is not partial to the bel canto repertoire before he nonetheless waxes on about the melodic appeal of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor.”

The strategy for the company’s new production of “Lucia” is to depend on the vision of a former Lucia, Catherine Malfitano, to direct, apparently with the hope that the drama she once brought to the role—the actual singing of it was never her strength—would somehow translate to another portrayal and to an entire production. Would that it were so.

Instead, the end result comes off as a bewildering affair, marked by portrayals that seem detached as to what their specific character—to say nothing of anyone else’s—is doing in this opera. Read the rest of this entry »

Renee Fleming/Photo: Andrew Eccles

RECOMMENDED

 Although billed annually as “Stars of Lyric Opera at Millennium Park,” there have been some years where the billing has had a noticeable dog star or two. But this year, the first such concert since soprano Renée Fleming was named creative consultant at Lyric Opera, Fleming’s presence as the reigning superstar soprano in the world today boosts up the luminosity factor of this pre-season concert considerably.  

Coming as it does on the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11—an occasion when Fleming soothed the soul of the nation with the balm of her voice at services at Ground Zero—Fleming offers “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel” as an opening piece and commemoration of that occasion. Read the rest of this entry »

Nadia Krasteva/Photo: Dan Rest

RECOMMENDED

For those Lyric Opera subscribers who missed the October performances of “Carmen” and instead have tickets to the March performances, there is good news: this recast incarnation is a far stronger production.

The fall production had been planned around the Lyric debut of mezzo-soprano Kate Aldrich in the title role a mere five years after the company had last presented the popular warhorse, only to have Aldrich cancel due to complications from a pregnancy. Lyric’s solution was to cast the Carmen it had originally scheduled for a single matinee that Aldrich could not make—Iowa mezzo-soprano Katharine Goeldner—in all of the Carmens that Aldrich was originally scheduled to sing.

The result was a Carmen with a pleasing voice and stage presence, but a seductress in search of seductiveness, a low-energy temptless temptress. It is fascinating that Bulgarian mezzo-soprano Nadia Krasteva is neither more attractive—nor does she have a better voice—than Goeldner, but my, oh my, what a difference dramatically, which in this iconic role, counts for so much. This is a Carmen with swagger and attitude, a creature of wild and reckless freedom, which is not only what attracts Don José to her, but remains her lasting appeal to audiences. Read the rest of this entry »

Alice Coote, David Daniels/Photo: Dan Rest

RECOMMENDED

“War Follows You Home,” read the posters promoting Peter Sellars’ new production of Handel’s “Hercules” at Lyric Opera. Unlike his last production here—John Adams’ “Doctor Atomic,” where Sellars concocted his own libretto from nuclear formulae—Sellars has this time taken an existing work, an oratorio by Handel, and via extensive cuts and staging, cobbled a narrative that has tried to wrestle Handel’s work closer to its original source material, Sophocles’ “Women of Trachis,” that had been hopelessly optimized by Handel’s adapter. And yes, it works. Brilliantly, in fact.

What Sellars sees is that there is a profound parallel between the Sophocles telling of the post-labors Hercules’ homecoming into what has become an alien and uncontrollable world and the post-traumatic-stress syndrome of American troops returning from our own recent wars. The casualty in all of this, unfortunately, is much of Handel’s music, which has been gutted and restructured to conform to Sellars’ particular interpretation; entire choruses, arias, instrumental pieces, characters and subplots—even the glorious finale itself which portrays an apotheosis of Hercules into the arms of his father Jupiter—in short, anything that doesn’t fit Sellars’ directorial overlay, is simply disrespectfully discarded. Read the rest of this entry »

By Dennis Polkow

“Enraptured” is the word most often used to describe experiencing Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at Lyric Opera (through March 8), heard here for the first time in thirty-one years. Under retiring general director William Mason, the thinking was to generally alternate seasons between Wagner and Richard Strauss, the two most expensive composers to produce in an opera house because of the large size of the orchestras needed to perform them.

But last year, neither composer was performed, and since next year’s Richard Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos,” only requires a chamber orchestra, couldn’t Wagner have been included next season as well? Grabbing a bite in his backstage dressing room at the Civic Opera House before a matinee of Puccini’s “La fanciulla del West,” Sir Andrew Davis titters with audible delight at the suggestion.

“You know I love these works deeply,” he says, “but they are very expensive to produce. Aside from the orchestra, there is the cast size and you cannot skimp on Wagner. How many great Lohengrins are there in the world today? One? Two? And imagine, the best one is sitting right there,” says Davis, pointing to South African tenor Johan Botha, who has entered the room.

“I can only sing ten to twelve Wagner performances a season,” admits Botha, “and this year, I am doing seven of them in Chicago. That means that the Met, Vienna, anywhere else in the world that wants you to sing Wagner has to wait because you can only sing in one place at a time.” Read the rest of this entry »

Johan Botha, Emily Magee/Photo: Dan Rest

RECOMMENDED

Clocking in at four-and-a-half-plus hours and taking thirty-plus years to get back to Lyric Opera, “Lohengrin” is once again riding in on a swan—or in this case, a projected swan silhouette—for a stunning evening of musical theater as only Wagner could provide it.

No, this is hardly the new production that was originally promised, but a truncated version of the colorless whitebox version seen here in 1980 with Eva Marton’s memorable Elsa and “staged” this time around in a static and at times, ridiculous manner. But no matter. Close your eyes and feast on the glorious sounds, a rare Chicago opportunity to savor Wagner’s sixth and last opera, per se, as the true Wagnerian revolution that would forever change music would commence in earnest with his next work, “Tristan und Isolde,” which would usher in the new art form that Wagner would dub music drama.

“Lohengrin” is a work with one foot each in opera and music drama: the characters are the most psychologically developed to that point, and the drama component is as important as the music, a rarity as of yet, and of course, the work has some of the finest choral singing of any opera. Pity that longtime Lyric chorus master Donald Palumbo never had a crack at “Lohengrin” in Chicago before the Met spirited him away from us, but current chorus master Donald Nally, who is retiring after this season, really pulled out all of the stops and had the Lyric Opera Chorus sounding their most glorious of his time here. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from the Lyric Opera:

William Mason’s final season as general director
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 57th season begins Saturday, October 1, 2011, at 6:30 p.m.
THE TALES OF HOFFMANN starring Matthew Polenzani, James Morris, Anna Christy, Erin Wall, & Alyson Cambridge

Also next season: Lucia di Lammermoor*, Boris Godunov, Ariadne auf Naxos, The Magic Flute, Aida, Show Boat*, and Rinaldo*
72 performances of 8 operas in the 25-week season
*THREE NEW PRODUCTIONS to be seen at Lyric in 2011-12 including two Lyric Opera premieres Read the rest of this entry »