Commentary: How rich, how embracing and inviting, are the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s newly bruited plans for the 2025-26 season? I went through the detailed chronology of subscription programs to highlight a dozen. Then, after making some hard choices, I counted my picks. There were 20. Music director-designate Klaus Mäkelä will lead four programs and take the orchestra on an eastern tour. I’ve been reporting on orchestra seasons for half a century. I don’t recall a horizon more enticing than the CSO’s lineup for the season ahead.
Read the full story »Brahms’ three trios for violin, cello and piano, played in perfect completeness by three stars
Review: Even if it wasn’t literally a once in a lifetime experience, it was rare enough, and it surely was special: the opportunity to hear all three of Brahms’ piano trios performed in a single concert. Violinist Leonidas Kavakos, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax converged on the Brahms trios before an overflow audience at Orchestra Hall that spilled onto stage seating. The event in the Symphony Center Presents series delivered all that one might have wished for, and then some.
‘The Wolves’ at Goodman: Girls soccer team, answering challenges sans Prince Charming
Review: Week after week, the Wolves, a teen girls’ soccer team, coalesces into a fighting force. Meanwhile, that other towering season – adulthood – looms inevitable. Both are transformations thrilling to contemplate. An extraordinary new play by a millennial playwright depicts self-confident girls who intend to romance the world on their own terms. ★★★★
‘A Moon for the Misbegotten’ at Writers: Grasping for some truth beneath a pall of lies
Review: Brawny Phil Hogan and his imposing, hard-as-nails daughter Josie are poor tenant farmers in 1920s Connecticut. James Tyrone Jr., who owns the farm, is a wealthy playboy who’s always had a soft spot for Josie – and for booze and, by loud proclamation, the tarts on Broadway. The daily bread of them all, these desperate occupants of Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” is mendacity. They lie to each other and they lie to themselves, until they each find some part of redemption in some measure of truth. Their rough progress toward that grail is a magical thing to witness at Writers Theatre. ★★★★
‘You Got Older’ at Steppenwolf: In a theatrical clinic, Francis Guinan lifts play to higher level
Review: Clare Barron’s shadow-streaked comedy “You Got Older,” about a father’s death and a daughter’s transfiguration, is an oddly – I might even say deceptively – unsatisfying play. The real reward of Steppenwolf Theatre’s staging directed by Jonathan Berry, and the only thing that might draw me back to see it again, is the ever-luminous Francis Guinan’s performance as a loving father fighting a losing battle with cancer. ★★★
‘Hinter’ at Steep: Down on farm, bodies pile up as thriller flips narrative on its head. Go figure.
Review: In an imaginative whodunnit, Chicago writer Calamity West proposes the hypothetical solution to an unsolved mass murder from 1922. Bavaria’s counterpart to the Lizzie Borden story (in notoriety if not in detail) involves six people on a farmstead in Munich’s remote outback. All were found hacked to death. ★★★
Mozart’s ‘Cosi fan tutte’ at the Lyric Opera: Amorous faith as farce, staged in high style
Review: It’s essentially chamber music, Mozart’s splendorous opera “Cosi fan tutte,” and it is a stellar sextet of singers that Lyric Opera of Chicago has assembled in a setting that is itself a picture of elegant intimacy. Despite its gender-specific title, “Cosi fan tutte” – or Women Are Like That – is a double-edged satire of the wobbly ways of love. Never mind that the course of true love never did run smooth; this delicious slice of musical mirth contrived by Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte declares that affection is inherently mutable: It is the very oiseau rebelle that Carmen celebrates in Bizet’s opera. ★★★★★
‘Franklinland’ at Jackalope: Ben lords it over his son, who naturally tells him to go fly a kite
Review: Imagine a delightful afternoon kite-flying with Ben Franklin: You are his young bastard son trying to keep up; he is the irrepressible achiever, inventor, visionary – a narcissist who, when he sees you at all, looks upon you as a project at best and, as he constantly reminds you, a poor copy of his matchless self. That’s the skewed but fascinating relationship played out in Lloyd Suh’s “Franklinland” at Jackalope Theatre. ★★★★
‘Elizabeth Cree’ at Chicago Opera Theater: Bloody mayhem and totally tonally winning
Review: Through the 20th and 21st centuries, composers and librettists have pushed opera in exciting and unexpected directions, proving again the flexibility and richness of this enduring art form. A fresh example is Kevin Puts’ “Elizabeth Cree,” which offers something almost never seen before – a bloody, fast-action operatic thriller with a juicy plot twist. Presented in the ideally sized, 691-seat Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building, “Elizabeth Cree” is one of the most successful offerings from Chicago Opera Theater in recent years. ★★★★
CSO’s concerts at Carnegie Hall were grand, but splendor also was writ small – in encores
Review: If the two ambitious programs delivered at New York’s Carnegie Hall on Feb. 9 and 10 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Riccardo Muti roundly summarized the nearly eight seasons of Muti’s directorship, the essence of it – and maybe the key – was articulated in the encores.
Bellini’s ‘I puritani’ at the Lyric Opera: Love, vengeance, madness borne aloft on high C’s
Review: No one doubted that Russian soprano Albina Shagimuratova would be back at the Lyric Opera of Chicago after doing such a superb job of going mad the first time around. In 2016 she portrayed the innocent Scottish lass Lucia, of Lammermoor, forced into an arranged marriage despite her betrothal to someone else. She emerged from the wedding chamber armed with psychotic coloratura, compliments of Donizetti, and a knife dripping in blood. Now she’s back as the Puritan maiden Elvira, who is mentally shattered by her fiancé’s abrupt departure on her wedding day. Cue the coloratura. ★★★
Chicago Symphony opens an East Coast tour with bravura Brahms at the Kennedy Center
Review: With his familiar wave to a raucous audience signaling that Elvis was leaving the building, conductor Riccardo Muti ended the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s concert at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 7 – without an encore, a rarity on CSO tour concerts. But on this night there was nothing left to say musically. Surely all possible expectations of a well-filled house had been satisfied by a poetic and finely contoured performance of Brahms’ Second Symphony.
Part 3 of Wagner’s ‘Ring,’ and other treasures that glitter in the Lyric Opera’s 2018-19 season
Report: The Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2018-19 season, announced Feb. 6, has a golden ring to it. While pushing on to the third installment of its four-year journey through Wagner’s “Ring” cycle with “Siegfried,” and returning to the treasury of Handel with its first ever staging of “Ariodante,” the Lyric will lay out three super-size Italian nuggets as sure-fire box office draws: Puccini’s “La bohème” and two Verdi favorites, “La traviata” and “Il trovatore.”
Of mortal frailty and monstrous transgression: Broadway in Chicago spotlights ‘The Humans’
Review: In the midst of Stephen Karam’s abrasive family drama “The Humans,” presented on tour by Broadway in Chicago at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, the question of monsters comes up. Monsters in dreams. And someone speculates that if humans dream of monsters, perhaps what strikes terror in the imagination of horrid fantastical creatures is the image of a human. It’s a fleeting exchange, but it lies right at the core of this group portrait of people grappling with dreadful reality, hideous betrayal, terrifying truths about themselves. ★★★★
‘Blind Date’ at Goodman: The epochal meeting that changed the world – and all that glam
Review: Three other plays edged into mind as I watched Rogelio Martinez’s ambitious and entertaining political drama “Blind Date” unfold on the Goodman Theatre stage. Two were more distilled slants on similar big-picture crises. But it was the third that finally lined itself up beside this glossy romp: the unpretentiously cosmetic musical “War Paint.” Martinez’s play reimagines the historical meeting between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. ★★★
CSO premieres Higdon’s Low Brass Concerto, spotlighting veteran foursome of the orchestra
Review: On the one hand, Jennifer Higdon’s solidly crafted Low Brass Concerto, which received its world premiere Feb. 1 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Riccardo Muti, enjoyed artful framing by three brilliant pieces from by a wide range of top-flight composers from the past. On the other hand, well, see above. The premiere featured four veteran members of the CSO brass section.
‘Boy’ at TimeLine: Caught in a physiological trap, lad is certain that he’s not, alack, a lass
Review: Adam is a boy, age maybe 20. So you’re thinking, OK, if he’s 20, he’s more man than boy. Exactly. But for Adam, in Anna Ziegler’s play “Boy,” getting to manhood meant first establishing his boyhood – or boyness, if you like. And that is both the most engaging and the most problematic part of this drama now on the boards at TimeLine Theatre. ★★★
Muti extends CSO directorship for two years, and orchestra announces plans for 2018-19
Report: Music director Riccardo Muti has extended his tenure as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra through August 2022, two years beyond his current contract, the orchestra announced Jan. 30. Muti, 75, who began his directorship in 2010, will maintain his present level of commitment to the CSO — 10 weeks of subscription concerts and community engagement plus three to four weeks of touring. The announcement of Muti’s extension coincided with release of the Chicago Symphony’s 2018-19 season.
Minnesota Orchestra is fleet, crisp, complete in ear-opening visit to Chicago with Vänskä
Review: The Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä has been the go-to guy for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on more than one urgent occasion in recent history, valiantly saving the day on not much more than pure adrenalin. But when he visited Chicago with his own Minnesota Orchestra, the maestro and his thoroughly prepared band projected a more serene mindset entirely.
‘Five Mile Lake’ at Shattered Globe: Siblings, distant or demanding, all in the swim together
Review: Rachel Bond’s play “Five Mile Lake,” a provocative slice of life currently held up for examination by Shattered Globe Theatre, is about lives out of kilter, out of perspective, out of adjustment. Before the play even begins, Jeffrey D. Kmiec’s disorienting set tells you as much. ★★★
From ‘Great’ Schubert to revelatory Mahler, Honeck scores again with Chicago Symphony
Review: For the second time this season, conductor Manfred Honeck has ascended the podium of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to shed new light on a major work that is oh so familiar. Back in November, it was Schubert’s “Great C major” Symphony. This go-round, it’s Mahler’s Fifth Symphony that Honeck explores as if wired into the composer’s creative mind.
‘All My Sons’ at Court: The sins of a father, unatoned and brought down on two houses
Review: It’s as Greek as Aeschylus, the inexorable tragedy that infects and ultimately destroys two families in Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.” And in the marvelous, shattering production at Court Theatre directed by Charles Newell, a long Greek shadow falls across Miller’s characters, amid the torment and self-deception, in spectral silence. ★★★★★
Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare, in heady debut with CSO, lights up Bernstein, Bartók
Review: Mark the name of 37-year-old Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare, who made his subscription debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Jan. 18. My guess is that few in the audience had heard of him, that no one who was there will forget him, and that he will soon be back.
Catering to opera-goers hungry before show, Lyric’s restaurant, bistro take it up an octave
Around Town: Lyric’s onsite restaurants are fiercely dedicated to the principle that Yes, you absolutely will make curtain, and Yes, you can come back to your table at intermission for coffee, dessert, and the rest of the wine.
‘Rose’ at Greenhouse: Linda Reiter reprises her grand turn as matriarch of the Kennedys
Review: The steely mother in Laurence Leamer’s one-woman show “Rose” shares a view back through the prism of her privileged life that is severe, magical and mixed. Linda Reiter as Rose Kennedy, cool-hand mom to a brilliant, driven brood that includes stars John, Bobby and Teddy, spells out how so queenly a matron might be at once proud and happy, marginalized and resigned. ★★★★
Ailyn Pérez replaces Erin Wall as Marguerite for Lyric Opera’s new production of ‘Faust’
This Just In: The following is a news release written by an arts organization and submitted to Chicago On the Aisle.
Canadian-American soprano Erin Wall has withdrawn from “Faust” at Lyric Opera of Chicago to undergo chemotherapy, Anthony Freud, …
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.
Sinfonietta unfurls evocative musical tapestry of a Langston Hughes African-American epic
Preview: Chicago Sinfonietta’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. tribute concert is consistently the orchestra’s best-attended event of the year, says music director Mei-Ann Chen. But this year’s MLK affair – Jan. 15 at Orchestra Hall — will also be Sinfonietta’s most ambitious enterprise: composer Laura Karpman’s musically multicultural setting of Langston Hughes’ epic poem about the African-American experience, “Ask Your Mama.”
Muti to lead CSO in Kennedy Center, Carnegie concerts, kicking off East Coast tour Feb. 7-17
This Just In: The following is a news release written by an arts organization and submitted to Chicago On the Aisle.
Music Director Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will make a five-city, eight-concert East …
‘The Light’ at New Colony: Lovers sparring, teasing; then the earth opens and pain erupts
Review: Gen is trapped in a numbing confluence of righteousness and anger, paralyzed between the ideal of goodness and the reality of imperfection. She’s the everywoman – specifically, every black woman — of Chicago playwright Loy Webb’s stunning new work “The Light,” now in its world premiere production by The New Colony. ★★★★★
Monte-Carlo Ballet to make Auditorium debut with re-imagined classic ‘Sleeping Beauty’
This Just In: The following is a news release written by an arts organization and submitted to Chicago On the Aisle.
Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, the national ballet company of Monaco, comes to the Auditorium Theatre …
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