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Lyric spirits meet at last: Riccardo Muti leads CSO in poetic turn through music by Mazzoli

Oct 8, 2021 – 6:32 pm
Missy Mazzoli CSO composer debut 2021-10-07 Todd Rosenberg

Review: Of all the composers-in-residence appointed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during music director Riccardo Muti’s tenure, Mazzoli is the one whose interests are most in sync with his. She has several successful operas and lyric works under her belt already. Muti led Mazzoli’s intense yet dreamlike “These Worlds in Us” on Oct. 8 at Orchestra Hall. Her tenure as CSO composer in residence, disrupted by Covid, had ended June 30.

Long silence ends: Chicago Symphony, Muti make ‘Heroic’ return to roaring Orchestra Hall

Sep 24, 2021 – 9:17 pm
CSO20210923_0236 Music lovers surround the Orchestra Hall stage for Muti's return (Todd Rosenberg)

Review: It was at once bizarre and exhilarating to be back at Orchestra Hall with a masked throng seated elbow-to-elbow. Yet the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s glistening, soaring, pin-perfect performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat (“Eroica”) with music director Riccardo Muti on Sept. 23 lent the occasion a marvelous normalcy. This is what had been absent from life for more than a year and a half. This familiar musical brilliance and wordless eloquence. This profound spirituality.

Lyric Opera, sporting houseful of new seats, reopens with bloody (but beautiful) ‘Macbeth’

Sep 21, 2021 – 9:16 pm
Feature 4 8 - LOC Macbeth - Sondra Radvanovsky as Lady Macbeth and Craig Colclough as Macbeth - photo Ken Howard - MACB_0325

Review: In his operatic retelling of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” Verdi went straight to heart of the tale’s dark and brilliant confusion, its chiaroscuro, and it resonates with bleak authenticity in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s return to the stage. The potent new production of “Macbeth,” devised by David McVicar, was led by Enrique Mazzola in his first flourish as Lyric’s music director. ★★★★★

Coalition of key Chicago theaters to require mask plus vaccination proof or negative test

Aug 17, 2021 – 8:44 pm
wear a mask

Report: A coalition of more than 65 performing arts venues and producers across Chicagoland has announced Covid-19 vaccination and mask requirements for audiences through the end of 2021. The unified Covid protection protocol, which takes effect Sept. 1 for indoor productions, requiries audience members to provide proof of vaccination or negative test certification upon entry and to wear masks.

Mapping its return to the opera stage, Lyric sketches a wider, more inclusive landscape

May 24, 2021 – 11:58 am
Macbeth rendering (John MacFarlane) feature image

Preview: As Lyric Opera of Chicago moves toward that moment opera buffs in Chicagoland have long awaited, the post-pandemic opening of a new season Sept. 17, the company’s music director-designate, Enrique Mazzola, gives the impression of an artist well ahead of the curve. Speaking about Lyric’s new production of Verdi’s early “Macbeth,” which will bring live opera back to Chicago, the Spanish-born Italian conductor sounds like he’s already there.

As Lyric Opera bids farewell to Andrew Davis, the maestro puts down his baton for a trowel

May 15, 2021 – 4:07 pm
SAD Headshot from stage, feature image c. Dario Acosta 0505

Interview: Under the pandemic’s abiding if perhaps fading shadow, Lyric Opera of Chicago has fashioned a virtual salute to its exiting music director, Andrew Davis. With some very fine singers as well as the Lyric chorus, Davis led an ambitious video in his honor that debuts May 16. In a chat with Chicago On the Aisle, the maestro reflected on his two decades at the company’s artistic helm.

Songs on heat and passion of ‘Sun and Love’ billed for Lyric’s Ryan singers, new maestro

Feb 20, 2021 – 8:54 am
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Preview: Conductor Enrique Mazzola, Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new music director-designate, presides at the piano over a selection of rare love songs by famous Italian composers, sung by the young professionals in training at Lyric’s Ryan Opera Center. Titled “Sole e Amore” – Sun and Love – the free program streams at 6 p.m. Feb. 21.

Lyric drops curtain on entire 2020-21 season, projects return to opera house next September

Oct 23, 2020 – 3:31 pm
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Report: Lyric Opera of Chicago’s lamentable, if not terribly surprising, announcement that it has canceled the entire remainder of its 2020-21 season comes with a poignant promise of renewed life much as we once knew it: detailed and quite enticing plans for 2021-22, a full season projected to start in the customary month of September.

Voices of love: Grand dame Renée Fleming, shooting star J’Nai Bridges in Lyric songfest

Sep 13, 2020 – 12:46 pm
Renee Fleming to perfom via streaming for Lyric Opera special event 2020

Preview: The celebrated soprano Renée Fleming and mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, an emerging star, have collaborated with a diverse cast of singers to create “For the Love of Lyric,” a concert pre-recorded in part on the Lyric stage. The songfest will be offered free online starting at 6 p.m. Sept. 13. Fleming and Bridges offer two views of a singer’s life in our pandemic world.

Lyric Opera cancels its entire autumn season; January opening brings newly honored ‘Blue’

Jun 17, 2020 – 6:59 pm
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Report: Confronted by the pandemic’s stark outlook, Lyric Opera of Chicago has announced cancellation of all productions through December, the entire autumn portion of it 2020-21 season. For now, the company plans to resume operation in January with the new opera “Blue,” a riveting tragedy about a black policeman’s family facing violence and heartbreak by Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori and playwright Tazewell Thompson. “Blue” was named Opera of the Year on June 17 by the Music Critics Association of North America.

Lyric Opera postpones remainder of season; CSO and WFMT create new broadcast series

Apr 3, 2020 – 8:38 am
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Report: Lyric Opera of Chicago announced April 2 that it will defer its spring musical, “42nd Street,” along with all other spring projects until coming seasons. Meanwhile, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra unveiled collaboration with WFMT to broadcast and stream a series of Tuesday programs from the orchestra’s concert archives and CDs, curated by music director Riccardo Muti.

The new (virus) vibe: Chicago musicians play together while apart for a worldwide audience

Mar 28, 2020 – 7:56 pm
Third Coast Percussion Philip Glass reat img

Antidotes: If the COVID-19 virus temporarily froze operations at the nation’s classical music capitals including Chicago, there are definitely signs the industry is getting its groove back. Available for streaming is a concert performed live from the University of Chicago, with no audience in the hall, by Chicago’s outstanding Third Coast Percussion. The Chicago Symphony’s prestigious Civic Orchestra training ensemble marks its 100th anniversary with some Tchaikovsky, digitally assembled from dozens of individual recordings made on smartphones and Zoom audio recorders. Two familiar faces at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Ryan McKinny and Isabel Leonard, offer an alluring cell phone duet from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” And – wait for it – we have a priceless slice of Beethoven whimsy for you at our story’s end.

Stages of Silence: Lyric cancels ‘Ring’ cycle; CSO and Chicagoland theaters also go dark

Mar 14, 2020 – 9:48 am
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Report: It was a day to give Friday the 13th a bad name. Lyric Opera of Chicago made the unavoidable but nonetheless stunning decision to cancel the whole of its long-anticipated cycles through Wagner’s “Ring” tetralogy. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra essentially placed its virtuoso forces on paid leave. Broadway in Chicago shut down its main presentations in the Loop. And one after another, theaters large and small posted immediate stoppage of whatever was on their stages along with cancellation of whatever might be next.

Eric Owens, citing health issues, withdraws as Wotan in Wagner ‘Ring’ cycle at Lyric Opera

Mar 2, 2020 – 12:35 pm
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Report: Bass-baritone Eric Owens has withdrawn from the role of Wotan in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s upcoming “Ring” cycles “in order to undergo treatment for ongoing health issues,” Lyric general director Anthony Freud announced March 2.

Lyric Opera’s departing music director Davis, successor Mazzola to share podium in 2020-21

Feb 13, 2020 – 3:23 pm
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Report: Lyric Opera of Chicago has cast outgoing music director Andrew Davis in a starring role through the 2020-21 season announced Feb. 12. Besides leading three productions, including Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” the opera in which he made his Lyric debut in 1987, Davis will conduct a special performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus. The Sept. 17 opening night double bill of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria rusticana” and Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci” will also offer Lyric patrons their first glimpse of completely redone seating throughout the house.

Muti leads Chicago Symphony and stellar cast in concert ‘Cavalleria’ richly staged for the ear

Feb 9, 2020 – 6:47 pm
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Review: Pietro Mascagni’s opera “Cavalleria rusticana” led by music director Riccardo Muti and starring the sensational 36-year-old Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili amidst an outstanding cast, was a performance for the ages.

Two piano concertos add to Beethoven riches in Chicago Symphony’s year-long celebration

Jan 31, 2020 – 4:56 pm
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Review: It was not perhaps the same bounty that surrounded the world premiere of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto in 1808, an evening that also included the premieres of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and the “Choral Fantasy.” Still, at this juncture in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s season-long celebration of Beethoven’s 250th year, it felt like a generous opportunity indeed to hear both the Fourth Piano Concerto and the First on the same program, with the excellent and roundly Beethoven-tested pianist Paul Lewis as soloist and Andrew Davis on the podium.

Andrew Davis, gearing up to lead Lyric ‘Ring,’ conducts CSO while cueing ‘Queen of Spades’

Jan 30, 2020 – 4:37 pm
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Interview: Conductor Andrew Davis, music director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, is taking a time-out from the bit of Wagner he’s preparing over at Lyric – the four-opera, 17-hour “Ring of the Nibelung” – to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with pianist Paul Lewis in some Beethoven. Davis paused backstage at Orchestra Hall to reflect on his late-blooming history with Wagner’s music, his fascination with the monumental “Ring” and the frankly boggling effort required to bring it off.

Bryn Terfel cancels Lyric Opera date after fall during ‘Flying Dutchman’ production in Spain

Jan 29, 2020 – 3:19 pm
Welshman

Report: The Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel has canceled his Feb. 2 recital at Lyric Opera of Chicago because of an injury suffered while performing in Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” in Bilbao, Spain. In a statement released Jan. 29, Lyric said: “Sir Bryn Terfel, suffered a severe injury from a fall that will not allow him to perform in Chicago this weekend. According to Sir Bryn’s physician, he has fractured the three prominences of his ankle, causing the ankle to partly dislocate and requiring a surgery scheduled for later this week.”

Welcome to opera’s Roaring ’20s: New voices spark resurgence in a once-wavering art form

Jan 28, 2020 – 5:42 pm
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Commentary: Back in the 20th century, opera companies looked to be in danger of obsolescence. The canon of works was European, old and getting older, and sung in foreign languages. The stars with the greatest vocal gifts didn’t necessarily look their parts compared to standards set by Broadway. Amplification was in. DJs were hot. Film made fantasy impossibly real. Opera cost a lot. But now we’re at the onset of opera’s Roaring Twenties, not least here in Chicago, where a young and fearless theater audience is up for anything if the story-telling is good. Here’s a look at what’s ahead.

Ryan McKinny sheds the mantle of a murderer for chameleon cape of Don Giovanni at Lyric

Dec 5, 2019 – 6:19 pm
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Interview: Bass-baritone Ryan McKinny was Donny-on-the-spot when Lyric Opera of Chicago found itself suddenly bereft of a Don Giovanni  to finish out the current run of Mozart’s opera. A change in the lead role had been planned all along, but Lyric got stranded when the scheduled replacement became indisposed. Enter McKinny, who was already in the house, wrapping up his engagement at Lyric as the convicted murderer Joseph De Rocher in Jake Heggie’s opera “Dead Man Walking.”

In parade of regal opera, Sondra Radvanovsky inhabits three tragic Donizetti queens at Lyric

Dec 3, 2019 – 3:40 pm
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Review: Perhaps the best part of soprano Sondra Radvanovsky’s exhilarating excursion through Donizetti’s Three Queens at Lyric Opera on Dec. 1 is the fact that this remarkable and brave singer will repeat her tour de force – twice. It is an event earmarked not just for enthusiasts of bel canto, but indeed for any operaphile who prizes great drama as the point of great singing. ★★★★★

It’s two years until he takes Lyric Opera reins, but Enrique Mazzola already feels like family

Oct 11, 2019 – 3:15 pm
Enrique Mazzola Jean-Baptiste Millot feature image

Interview: The year 2019 has been for Enrique Mazzola an intense and rewarding breakthrough year he’ll remember for the rest of his life. Named music director designate at Lyric Opera of Chicago, effective with the 2021-22 season, Mazzola talks about learning the ropes in Berlin, Sazburg, New York and Paris and his desire to bring all that experience “energetically to the Lyric,” which he envisions as “a big music home for everybody.”

‘Barber of Seville’ at Lyric Opera: Girl power prevails amid vocal fireworks, lots of laughs

Sep 30, 2019 – 6:43 pm
9/25/19 2:03:44 PM -- Chicago, IL USA
Lyric Opera of Chicago
The Barber of Seville Dress Rehearsal
Rossini 
Sir Andrew Davis conductor

© Todd Rosenberg Photography 2019

Review: In love and determined to get her way, an awesome spitfire turns to Figaro, the barber, for assistance in Rossini’s gleefully funny opera buffa, “The Barber of Seville.” It’s now playing at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in a Broadway style production, with sun-drenched Moorish touches, roving set pieces on wheels, and a motley crew of singing comedians. ★★★★

Davis to step down as Lyric’s music director; Italian Enrique Mazzola will take reins in 2021

Sep 13, 2019 – 5:53 pm
Enrique Mazzola

Report: Andrew Davis will step down as music director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago at the end of the 2020-21 season, to be succeeded by Italian conductor Enrique Mazzola, the company announced on Sept. 12. Mazzola, principal guest conductor at Deutsche Oper Berlin, and until recently artistic and music director of the Orchestre National d’Île-de-France in Paris, made his Lyric debut in 2016 with Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor.” He returned in 2018 to lead Bellini’s “I Puritani.” He will conduct Verdi’s “Luisa Miller” at the Lyric in October.

Lyric Unlimited presents a brand-new opera for young audiences: ‘Earth to Kenzie’

Jun 28, 2019 – 4:33 pm
Earth to Kenzie top image (Lyric Opera Chicago)

This Just In: The following is a news release written by an arts organization, submitted to and edited by Chicago On the Aisle.
Tickets on sale June 27 for performances at Chicago’s Vittum Theater November 9-10, …

Lyric’s Ryan Center singers, Civic Orchestra produce plenty of sparkle on a shared stage

Jun 7, 2019 – 12:16 pm
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Review: Spirits were high and the audience could hardly have been more receptive when singers from the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Center for professional training collaborated with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago in an evening of opera arias and scenes June 5 at Orchestra Hall. The concert conducted by Michael Christie sampled a nicely varied mix of four operas from the 18th-20th centuries.

Chicago Symphony, its fabled sound blazing, gets wild welcome in return to Orchestra Hall

May 3, 2019 – 2:15 pm
5/2/19 9:51:29 PM -- Chicago, IL 
Chicago, IL 
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Riccardo Muti, Conductor
Joyce DiDonato, Soprano


Bizet Roma
Berlioz The Death of Cleopatra, Lyric Scene for Mezzo-Soprano and Orchestra
Respighi Pines of Rome

© Todd Rosenberg Photography 2019

Review: O say, can you see – the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is back, its seven-week strike over, music on the stands and music director Riccardo Muti once more presiding from the podium. To a whooping, standing-O reception, the CSO roared back into action at Orchestra Hall on May 2 with a performance that made clear the orchestra, in a twinkling, was all the way back: a full-fledged do-over. And lest anyone miss the point that, even at the three-quarter mark of the season, this was in spirit a restart, Muti began with a flick of his baton for a drumroll and struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

‘Moby-Dick’ at Chicago Opera Theater: Condensing the scope, cranking up the power

Apr 29, 2019 – 4:24 pm
Moby-Dick Press feature image Selects Michael Brosilow 15

Review: When Jake Heggies’ opera “Moby-Dick” had its world premiere in Dallas in 2010, everything about it was gargantuan and cutting edge technically, with enormous set pieces, elements flying in and out, lighting sufficient to evoke boat-swallowing storms at sea, and whale-size computer graphics. But a new and nifty mid-size design concept, seen at Chicago Opera Theater at the Harris atop Millennium Park, was just as thrilling, even more intense, as it zoomed in on the swirling human action and lurking danger in the vast surround. ★★★★

In a grand night of singing, Lyric Opera fetes Renée Fleming – with help from starry friends

Mar 25, 2019 – 9:21 pm
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Review: Her colleagues sang tributes, the next generation of opera stars chipped in with the exuberance of youth and the audience rocked the house on soprano Renée Fleming’s night – a very vocal celebration of that superstar’s multifaceted 25-year association with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The concert March 23 at the Lyric Opera House acknowledged the many ways the singer has contributed to the company as vocal star, consultant and mentor over the last quarter-century.