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Verdi’s ‘Don Carlos’ at Lyric Opera of Chicago: Epic French version is potent despite stark set
Review: The fascinating problem with the Lyric Opera production of Verdi’s “Don Carlos” – beautifully conducted by music director Enrique Mazzola, especially in the mystical, delicate parts – is that there is almost too much of it. A Thanksgiving feast comes to mind, that overwhelmed sense that can develop before the third helpings are passed and desserts loom. The fifth and final act ends, as it must, in defeat and death, with Verdi’s music at its most painfully exquisite.★★★★
Puccini’s ‘Tosca’ at Lyric Opera of Chicago: Love and death in the pitch and tumult of war
Review: What profound, disturbing harmonies permeate the Lyric Opera House in its current production of “Tosca.” It is wartime Rome, combustible and turbulent. The painter Cavaradossi and his lover, the opera star Tosca, are trapped in history’s maw. Soprano Michelle Bradley as the charismatic diva, tenor Russell Thomas as Cavaradossi and baritone Fabián Veloz as their conniving nemesis Scarpia make a compelling threesome in this vintage Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production. ★★★★
‘Queen of Spades’ at Lyric Opera of Chicago: Tchaikovsky’s grand drama draws dicey hand
Review: “The Queen of Spades” (or as the Russians say, “Pikovaya dama”) is without question a great opera, among Tchaikovsky’s best works of any kind, with enthralling tragedy and voluptuous, soaring music. He even wrote that he considered “The Queen of Spades” to be the culmination of his life’s work. Yet gloriously conducted though it was at Lyric Opera, and sung brilliantly by tenor Brandon Jovanovich as an obsessive gambler in a tailspin and soprano Sondra Radvanovsky as the blossoming noblewoman who falls for him, the production is willfully shocking and ultimately confusing.★★★
‘Madama Butterfly’ at Lyric Opera of Chicago: From a clear-sighted soprano, a high purpose
Review: In the #MeToo era, Puccini’s opera “Madama Butterfly” might seem awkwardly antiquated, Though it has held the boards as a box office favorite since its premiere in 1904, Lyric Opera of Chicago also evidently saw a problem in mounting its current production, which opened Feb. 6. The night’s program book advances not one but two fulsome arguments on behalf of this work about a beautiful 15-year-old geisha who is rented out in “marriage” to an American naval officer. But it is soprano Ana Maria Martinez’s finely sung, elegantly drawn portrait of Butterfly that once more raises the opera above its own deplorable subject matter and into the realm of high art. ★★★
‘Don Giovanni’ at Lyric Opera of Chicago: Surprise title-role change to heat up the drama
Review: What began as a routine change of cast for the title role in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” at Lyric Opera of Chicago, with baritone Lucas Meacham giving way to a scheduled replacement for three final performances in December, became a really intriguing development Nov. 25 when the next man up, Davide Luciano, was reported indisposed: The replacement’s replacement will be Ryan McKinny, the vocally and dramatically riveting killer Joseph De Rocher in Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking,” which just closed at Lyric. ★★★★
‘Dead Man Walking’ at Lyric Opera of Chicago: To killer facing death, a nun bears love’s balm
Review: The silence, the phenomenal silence in that huge opera house, spoke loudly about the music-drama unfolding onstage: imminent death awaiting the brutal murderer of two teenagers and the desperate effort by a nun to help this roughcut sociopath, now reduced to a tormented and frightened soul, find peace before his execution. This is “Dead Man Walking,” the magnificent opera by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Terrence McNally, brought to life once more through a shattering confluence of music and theater at Lyric Opera of Chicago. ★★★★★
‘Luisa Miller’ at Lyric Opera of Chicago: Verdi rarity is a happy augury for Mazzola era
Review: We shall see whether Lyric Opera of Chicago, when it comes under the musical leadership of Enrique Mazzola in 2021, pursues the plan of departing music director Andrew Davis to explore the early, less familiar operas of Giuseppe Verdi. The idea has merit, and I think Mazzola will stick with it. There are signs to support that probability in the example immediately at hand: Verdi’s “Luisa Miller,” which Mazzola himself conducts with spirit, insight and evident belief in the opera’s worth. ★★★
‘West Side Story’ at Lyric Opera of Chicago:
New love and old hatred stirred at high heat
Review: By now, Lyric Opera of Chicago can claim an impressive string of spring musicals, hugely popular explorations of classic Americana that appear like shining exclamation marks at the end of regular opera seasons. The latest, “West Side Story,” well may be the finest. Indeed, you might be hard pressed ever to find a more profoundly satisfying account of this exquisite music-drama, which shares with its model, Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” both its bittersweet hope and its timeless tragedy. ★★★★★
‘La traviata’ at Lyric Opera of Chicago: Beneath layers of familiarity, a pristine jewel
Review: Every opera that gains such enduring popularity as to acquire the epithet warhorse was once, well, a colt – exhilarating in its spunky freshness, its beauty undimmed by long familiarity and habitual service. The real marvel of Lyric Opera’s current staging of Verdi’s “La traviata” lies not just in its lustrous surfaces but rather in its surprising depth, in its true and affecting recovery of a splendor beyond – or, more to the point, before – habit. ★★★★★
‘Il trovatore’ at the Lyric Opera of Chicago: Vital foursome re-energizes a Verdi classic
Review: When people talk about high-energy spectacle and romantic intensity in Italian opera, “Il Trovatore” is the classic Exhibit A. An instant hit when it opened in Rome, it’s still a winner. Lyric’s three-way production with the San Francisco Opera and the Met is a concept that remains dynamic and fresh, from the flash and wham of gypsy smithies hammering away at their swords in the extravagant Anvil Chorus, to the tragic love triangle that complicates a civil war unfolding. ★★★★
Berg’s ‘Wozzeck’ at Lyric Opera of Chicago: Stark expressionism draped in musical riches
Review: Tomasz Konieczny is Wozzeck, the low-ranking soldier who sinks into madness as he is subjected to scientific experiments, betrayed in love and persistently harrassed. As envisioned by director David McVicar and conductor Andrew Davis, the 1925 opera is as deeply unsettling visually as it is musically rich. Berg’s account of Wozzeck’s grotesque travails has a way of suddenly panning wide, as if to embrace us all in our human dissonance and complexity.★★★★
‘The Scarlet Ibis’ at Chicago Opera Theater: Conflict of brotherly love, honed to lyric pitch
Review: Brotherly conflict is at the heart of composer Stefan Weisman’s extraordinary operatic adaptation of “The Scarlet Ibis,” a celebrated short story by James Hurst. The 95-minute opera reveals layers of meaning and symbolism and blurs intense naturalism with a kind of dreamy magical realism. The staging by Chicago Opera Theater manages to be at once touching and tender, tough and unflinching: a revelation of the work’s power and depth. ★★★★★
Chicago native Janai Brugger joins ‘Turandot,’ another bright spot in Lyric Opera production
Second Look: It was soprano Janai Brugger’s scheduled mid-run insertion as Liù, in Puccini’s “Turandot,” that drew me back for a second look at the Lyric Opera of Chicago production. But while Brugger’s performance rewarded my reprise, the experience also underscored some important truths about this last of Puccini’s operas – and about the real merit of the Lyric’s success with it.
Soprano Susanna Phillips, Lyric Opera alum, returns to Chicago to sing at Grant Park fest
Interview: Despite sounding hoarse over the phone because of a cold, Susanna Phillips gushed enthusiasm about making her debut at the Grant Park Music Festival on June 21 in a concert conducted by festival music director Carlos Kalmar. She’s just as enthusiastic about the unusual repertoire she’ll be performing, Aaron Copland’s “Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson.”
What’s under that skirt? Chicago Lyric Opera’s coloratura Anna Christy kicks Olympia into top gear
Lyric Opera close-up: We had to know. How is it that soprano Anna Christy is able to zip around like a hovercraft while pinging those sparkling high notes as Olympia, the mechanical doll, in “The Tales of Hoffmann”?
Haymarket Opera closes out its spring season with early Handel oratorio ‘La Resurrezione’
Review: Rarities, albeit not exactly operatic, have filled Haymarket Opera Company’s spring season – in March the first performance in 300 years of Maria Margherita Grimani’s 1715 melodrama “The Beheading of John the Baptist” (or “La decollazione di San Giovanni Battista”) and on June 14 an oratorio from Handel’s youthful Italian sojourn, “La Resurrezione.” The latter brought two unusual moves by Haymarket, the importation of someone other than founding artist director Craig Trompeter to conduct and a visiting star turn by Chicago violin virtuoso Rachel Barton Pine as concertmaster and spotlighted soloist.
Andrew Davis, conductor and scholar, led
opera and life with an imperishable twinkle
Remembrance: The last time I interviewed conductor Andrew Davis, in 2021, he was as I shall always think of him: soft-spoken, thoughtful, articulate, self-effacing, an undemonstrative intellectual with a wry spirit and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes that lit up his whole being. Of the many testimonials and tributes I’ve read about Davis since his death from leukemia on April 20 at age 80, the one I think he would have liked best was the succinct observation of Jeff Alexander, president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, that the British-born conductor possessed “good wit.”
As Lyric Opera emerges from challenging era, Anthony Freud winds up 13-year run at helm
Interview: With Anthony Freud’s announcement that he will depart the Lyric Opera of Chicago as its general director in July of this year, a significant transition in one of the Windy City’s leading arts institutions is upon us. “I feel great about the company, the strength of the institution from which I’m retiring,” said Freud at a recent sit-down interview in his office on the fourth floor of the Lyric Opera House. “I’m proud of the way we have evolved through challenging times. I think the work that we do is exciting, thought-provoking, innovative, and surprising in many ways.”
Diverse styles on display in MusicNOW series reflect rich, complex cultural stew of Chicago
Commentary: At yet another of its fascinating new-music concerts this season, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW event on March 3 ‒ conceived by the orchestra’s composer-in-residence Jessie Montgomery ‒ put me in mind, improbably enough, of Mozart, whose music overflowed with the influences of all he experienced in his travels through the cosmopolitan centers of Europe. Chicago is, absolutely, such an invigorating place to be.
Lyric’s stark, fierce ‘Jenůfa’ again showed how aggressive company has upped theater game
Commentary: This is Chicago, a city famous for spoken-theater companies that push drama to the ragged edge, finding new ways into the classics of Sophocles, Chekhov, Ibsen, O’Neill, Miller, Williams, Albee, and Shakespeare. As it proved again with its stunning November production of Janáček’s “Jenůfa,” the lightning-bolt of the fall season, Lyric Opera of Chicago in recent years has become likewise aggressive at offering novel approaches to opera’s greatest hits. I say bring it.
‘Flying Dutchman’ at Lyric Opera: A dark tale made brilliant by the voices of a doomed pair
Review: The sorry plight of Wagner’s Senta, the lass who obsesses about the accursed sea captain in “The Flying Dutchman,” always puts me in mind of Schubert’s plaintive Gretchen at the spinning wheel, bereft of peace and heavy of heart. “Dutchman” is one dark opera, populated by distraught or deeply neurotic characters for whom there is no relief and never will be. Still, there is a certain radiance to the bleakness and it suffuses a compelling account of Wagner’s music-drama at Lyric Opera of Chicago.
‘Carmen’ at Lyric Opera: Love and death in old Seville, ups and downs in a muddled retelling
Review: Two warring concepts shape and drive Bizet’s opera “Carmen” – love and death. Or in French, l’amour and la mort, the one word formed as if entirely by the lips, the other resonating from somewhere deep in the back of the throat. Love, in the earthy and precarious world of the gypsy Carmen, is transitory, a placeholder, an article as disposable as life itself. But death, this thing that wells up from so deep a place in speech, is profound and inevitable, the single eternal verity. Both musically and dramatically, Lyric Opera of Chicago’s busy and vibrant “Carmen” wants the depth and darkness that mark this work as the prototype of verismo opera. ★★
Chicago Symphony to open Carnegie season
as Riccardo Muti era closes with long goodbye
Report: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra will take the spotlight for the opening of Carnegie Hall’s 2023–24 season, with Riccardo Muti leading “a celebratory gala concert” on Oct. 4, the venerable New York institution announced. Muti, who steps down in June after 13 years as CSO music director, will also lead a second program the next night at Carnegie. The Carnegie opener features Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with Leonidas Kavakos and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” The second concert offers an Italian-themed program.
Barber of Chicago: ‘The Factotum’ reimagines Mozart and Rossini in Black community opera
Review: There’s never a time when producers and directors of new shows fail to think, in the final days before opening, “We could really use another month.” But there’s also no denying the tantalizing potential of a new hit on brew at the Harris Theater, where the Lyric Opera of Chicago has unveiled a first look at “The Factotum.” ★★★★
Lyric Opera’s bright and funny ‘Le Comte Ory’ confirmed the company’s return to full vigor
Commentary: No Chicago arts presenter deserves the success of its current season more than Lyric Opera, which in March of 2020 was forced, by the onset of Covid, to cancel its “Ring” cycle, a gargantuan undertaking involving Richard Wagner’s four-chapter mythical saga. The company capped its autumn offering with a dazzling go at Rossini’s comedy, in Bartlett Sher’s Metropolitan Opera production, designed by Michael Yeargan and revived here by Kathleen Smith Belcher.
Sharing stage time in Lyric’s early autumn: Vocally splendid Verdi and a fresh ‘Fiddler’
Review: Giuseppe Verdi’s 1844 opera “Ernani” could hardly be conducted, directed or sung more beautifully than it is at Lyric Opera of Chicago, where a quartet of lead singers make some all but impossible scenarios ring true under the leadership of music director Enrique Mazzola and theatrical director Louisa Muller. The opera classic has been sharing the Lyric stage with the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” in a riveting directorial treatment by the Australian Barrie Kosky, whose “Fiddler” puts the 19th-century story in a 21st-century envelope. Both shows: ★★★★
With Muti sidelined, young conductor steps up to lead Chicago Symphony in Brahms triumph
Review: Like the invited guests at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s open morning rehearsal on June 16, Lina González-Granados took a seat at Orchestra Hall to watch CSO music director Riccardo Muti lead the troops through Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C minor. After a break, the orchestra would be joined onstage by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, one of the most celebrated musicians in the world, for a run-through of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, the other work on that evening’s concert program, with Muti on the podium. But that’s not exactly what happened. Muti had tested positive for Covid and was done for the day. González-Granados, his resident conducting apprentice, sprang into action, taking over the rehearsal and scoring an impressive success in the evening concert.
Opera bio-drama ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ throws heat as it casts a spell on Lyric stage
Review: The Lyric Opera of Chicago has had its share of tough breaks in recent years, with ambitious projects felled by Covid including an international Wagner “Ring” festival that had been many years in the making. But what this determined company has accomplished since then is balm to the soul in an uneasy world. On the boards now through April 8 is a stunning success, a not-to-miss opera with a magnificent heart, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” ★★★★★
As Andrew Davis leads the Beethoven Ninth, spirit of Lyric Opera’s family spreads the joy
Review: It was supposed to have happened some time ago, a time that dissolved into the miasma of Covid, before the curtain came down most unceremoniously on conductor Andrew Davis’ 20-year stint as music director of Lyric Opera of Chicago. This was to have been his fitting exit, his personal coda — a performance under his leadership of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor with the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Finally, it all came to fruition April 1 at the Lyric Opera House, a titanic account of the Beethoven Ninth before a large and deeply appreciative audience.
‘Frozen’ at Broadway in Chicago: Snow queen, snowman (and reindeer) scooped into a treat
Review: As surely as we need a soul-warming thaw in this long pandemic winter, the glittering and heartily human musical fairytale “Frozen” brings that welcome heat to the Cadillac Palace. An all-out production that dazzles the eye even as it connects with emotional truth, this touring show stamps a capital B on Broadway in Chicago – a clever and generous extravaganza bursting with magical effects, buoyed by terrific singing and driven home by nuanced acting. ★★★★★
