Charles Castronovo/Photo: Dan Rest

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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

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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 »

Ferruccio Furlanetto/Photo: Dan Rest

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“Boris Godunov” is making a return appearance to Lyric Opera for the first time in some seventeen years, a long time to go without hearing the crown jewel of Russian opera. What is needed to make it work is a bass extraordinaire who doesn’t come around all that often. Lyric had to wait its turn to obtain the services of Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto, who is making his Lyric debut with this role.

One could quibble about the size and color of the voice, which is not the dark timbre often associated with classic performances of the tortured czar. But the nuances of Furlanetto’s characterization are profound and the shading of his voice expressive of the myriad of moods that need to be conveyed. Making a splendid contrast with Furlanetto is the darker sound of Italian bass Andrea Silvestrelli as Pimen. 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 »

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

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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 »

Photo: Dan Rest

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For those who think of Sergio Leone as having made the first “Spaghetti Westerns” in the mid-1960s, think again. More than half a century earlier, the Metropolitan Opera commissioned Giacomo Puccini to write a first-ever world premiere for the company that became a quirky Italian take on the American Old West.

Although an American subject had not been specified, Puccini’s previous opera, “Madama Butterfly,” had taken place in an exotic locale (Japan) with an American character who even struck up notes of the National Anthem in an aria. Puccini went to the same American playwright as “Butterfly,” David Blasko, and adapted his “Girl of the Golden West,” a reference to California in the days of gold fever.

Written by a composer best known for his melodies, “La fanciulla del West” has not enjoyed the same popularity of other Puccini operas precisely because what arias are there in this work, are contained within an expansive harmonic vocabulary that is the closest to Puccini’s own time of all of his works. Puccini was, after all, a twentieth-century composer still writing in a nineteenth-century style, though “Fanciulla” is his first work to give a sonic taste of his own century despite it being set in 1850. Read the rest of this entry »

Toby Spence, Andriana Chuchman, Neal Davies/Photo: Dan Rest

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Whenever an opera director makes the decision to “update” the specific time and place of a work—a common occurrence in the opera house—the key question aside from whether or not the libretto or music will support such a shift is: why? How does the work benefit from switching the original and intended time and place to another? Is an allegory being made that can be justified by the transposition?

In the case of Lyric Opera’s new production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Mikado,” the imaginary, fairy-tale Japan has been cast aside by director Gary Griffin in favor of the Japan of the 1920s. In other words, a “once upon a time” scenario of a Japan that never really existed has been replaced with a very specific Japan where something quite real and not very funny was going on that would ultimately have grave consequences for the world.

The only “Mikado” of the 1920s would be none other than Emperor Hirohito himself, and when the Mikado—played by James Morris—makes his entrance by 1930s motor car in Act II, he is wearing the same military uniform that Hirohito made so infamous during the Second World War. Not since Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” have we had a singing World War II-era dictator on stage, but the distracting problem in the case of “The Mikado” again is: why? Read the rest of this entry »

Renée Fleming/Photo: Dan Rest

By Dennis Polkow

When Lyric Opera recently sent out engraved invitations for a “special announcement” that also included “distinguished guest” Renée Fleming, opera websites were abuzz with wild rumors that the opera megastar would be taking over the company as successor to Lyric’s general director William Mason, who is retiring after the 2011-12 season.

Such speculation seemed bizarre at the very least: why would Fleming, currently the most popular operatic soprano on the planet and at the height of a spectacular career, give all of that up to take an administrative position at an opera company?

As media, donors and the cultural elite of Chicago began gathering late Thursday afternoon on the stage of the Civic Opera House, it was clear that something big was indeed up. The two dailies were given advance word, but the rest of us learned only an hour before the official announcement via email that Fleming had accepted a position as Lyric Opera’s first-ever “creative consultant” for a five-year period “effective immediately,” which also included guarantees of Fleming performing here across that time in a concert appearance, a gala, an opera and a “staged concert opera.” Fleming had also been elected to Lyric’s Board of Directors as a vice president, as had Lyric Opera’s decade-long music director Sir Andrew Davis.

All of this was stunning news on so many levels, particularly given Lyric Opera’s long and conservative identity. Anyone who knows the company history knows that change happens slowly and reluctantly. Of the three general directors that Lyric Opera has had in fifty-plus years, the first was its founder, the second her assistant and the third a company insider who had been involved for most of Lyric’s history. The company has had only two music directors. Only a coup could have brought about such radical change so quickly and decisively, and indeed, as Lyric Board president and CEO Richard P. Kiphart began addressing the gathering, a clearer picture began to emerge. Read the rest of this entry »