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 »Solemnity rules as Riccardo Muti guides CSO through musical perspectives on human spirit
Review: Riccardo Muti has given Chicago many reasons to celebrate his music directorship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, but perhaps the most perfect expression of his belief in art’s purpose comes in the current run of rarely heard works for chorus and orchestra by Brahms, Schoenberg and Cherubini. ****
Role Playing: Bill Norris pulled the seedy bum in ‘The Caretaker’ from a place within himself
Interview: The scruffy creature with darting eyes who calls himself Davies looks like his last bed was a cardboard box on the street. He is the elusive but palpably real character at the core of Harold Pinter’s play “The Caretaker,” now on the boards at Writers’ Theatre, and he’s brought to wheedling, calculating life in a masterful piece of acting by Bill Norris.
Raven Theatre sifts through debris and debate of ‘The Price,’ but can’t deliver the payoff
Arthur Miller on memory’s attic. 3 stars.
In a program of Handel arias, Iestyn Davies illuminates Baroque art of the countertenor
Review: You’ve got to hand it to countertenor Iestyn Davies and conductor Harry Bicket. When they take a night off from the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where they’re performing music of George Frideric Handel, they’re in another part of town performing … George Frideric Handel. Is this love or what? ****
Virtuosity on display, CSO and Zukerman burnish Brahms concerto, 2nd Symphony
Review: Sometimes, in the course of a symphony orchestra season, it’s good just to hear the band dial up the core German repertoire and show what it can do. That’s exactly what the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and music director Riccardo Muti did March 8 in a sumptuous double dose of Brahms, the Violin Concerto with soloist Pinchas Zukerman and the Second Symphony. *****
Soprano Hui He takes over as Aida in Lyric’s new cast, and suddenly the chemistry bubbles
“Aida” with four new singers. 4 stars!
With a vision of grace in the Arizona desert, Strawdog draws life from ‘Petrified Forest’
Desperate souls in a diner. 4 stars!
Chicago Shakespeare’s teen-length ‘Shrew,’ pulling out laugh stops, shows way to do Will
Spunky side of the Bard. 4 stars!
In a bold CSO debut, English conductor meets twin challenges of Mahler and Schoenberg
Review: Stepping in to pinch hit for Pierre Boulez may not be the least stressful way to make one’s conducting debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Subbing on short notice to take over Boulez’s rare pairing of Mahler’s song-symphony “Das Lied von der Erde” and Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto – that’s quite a debut.****
Handel trips back to the future as Lyric Opera proclaims the outrageous genius of ‘Rinaldo’
Not your grandfather’s Handel. 4 stars!
Lyric Opera commissions a young Peruvian’s first stage work, setting of Lima hostage crisis
The Lyric Opera of Chicago has commissioned the first opera from 33-year-old Peruvian composer Jimmy López, and will present the new work’s world premiere in December 2015.
As German bombardment strands Leningrad, political fear feeds desperation in ‘Hunger’
Portrait of duress at Lifeline. 4 stars!
‘Meistersinger’ to ‘Streetcar,’ Lyric Opera’s new season offers scenic route with 9 stops
The Chicago Lyric Opera’s new season begins and ends with shows that should attract aficionados of opera and theater: “Elektra” and “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Here’s the show-by-show breakdown.
In Porchlight’s ‘Catered Affair,’ a musical about ordinary people proves a dramatic jewel
A play verging on opera. 4 stars!
Darn that ‘Dream’ – Chicago Shakespeare does double take on Bard’s lovers, fairies
It’s a midsummer night… 4 stars!
Wrestling with sins of the flesh, a porn star finds salvation comes at a cost in ‘Hesperia’
Sex and religion at Writers’. 4 stars!
Lyric Opera ventures into American musical with a ‘Show Boat’ that you can’t help lovin’
Song and dance on the Delta. 5 stars!
Riccardo Muti, Chicago Symphony unleash alternative energy of Mason Bates, Anna Clyne
Feature: Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances in California and at Carnegie Hall will introduce new works by young resident composers Feb. 14-19 and Oct. 4.
It’s all about the verbs, present and veiled past, as lies collide in ‘The Girl in the Yellow Dress’
Student-teacher clash at Next. 4 stars!
Forget brass ring, tenor Jay Hunter Morris appears from nowhere to grab Wagner gold
Interview: The Texas native talks about his unlikely mid-career burst into stardom at the Metropolitan Opera. Morris plays the hero Siegfried in the Met’s HD broadcast of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” at cinemas worldwide Saturday, Feb. 11.
To beat of song and dance, ‘Ameriville’ sounds cautionary tales of life on the short end
Stompin’ at Victory Gardens. 3 stars
Chicago Symphony’s 2012-13 plans highlight Wagner, Stravinsky and waterway themes
Complete season highlights, details.
Steppenwolf’s dark view of ‘Time Stands Still’ frames a close-up of war’s toll
Some wounds heal slowly. 4 stars!
When ethnic roots snag the American dream, idealism stumbles in ‘Disgraced’
Meltdown at Amer. Theater Co. 5 stars!
‘Aida’ at the Lyric Opera: Verdi’s tragedy hits the pitches but misses some dramatic notes
The Princess’ rival is her slave. 3 stars
In Orff’s earthy ‘Carmina Burana,’ Muti guides CSO and vocal force to Fortune’s throne room
Review: Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus with the Chicago Children’s Choir conducted by Riccardo Muti. Maria Grazia Schiavo, soprano; Max Emanuel Cencic, countertenor; Stéphane Degout, baritone. Through Jan. 28. *****
It’s Mamet, so nothing’s plain as black/white when Goodman taps the bitter humor of ‘Race’
Cynically, unbearably funny. 4 stars!
Honeck and the Chicago Symphony recall Dvorak on native soil with a dancing Eighth
Review: If Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony is a yearning postcard “From the New World,” his Symphony No. 8 in G major is redolent of a composer happily settled on native ground. The Eighth is decidedly of the Old World, as conductor Manfred Honeck and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra so generously demonstrated Jan. 19 at Orchestra Hall. ****
‘Mr. Rickey’ imagines a prelude to history, before Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers
Full count at the Lookingglass. 3 stars.
Role Playing: Diane D’Aquila’s twice regal portrait as lover-monarch in ‘Elizabeth Rex’
Interview: Diane D’Aquila, who brings Queen Elizabeth I to regal and vulnerable life in Timothy Findley’s “Elizabeth Rex” at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, says acting in this gripping, keenly honed production “is a like a dance out there, and it’s scary as hell.”
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