‘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. ★★★★★

Like a constellation viewed above the skyline, Grant Park Chorus ascends in Chicago night

Review: A Grant Park Music Festival concert celebrating singers and song featured the world premiere setting of Native American songs and stories about a star cluster called “The Pleiades,” which is visible to the naked eye in colder months. Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds wrote it to be performed during the Chorus America Conference, which brought hundreds of the nation’s choruses large and small to Chicago. It played nicely in the out-of-doors in preamble to starlight and fireworks on the night before the summer solstice.

In Bernstein centennial tribute, Lyric Opera catches the biting edge of ‘Trouble in Tahiti’

Review: Leonard Bernstein’s “Trouble in Tahiti” may have been prophetic when it first soared into living rooms via black-and-white TV in 1952, but it can hardly have felt convenient. Married couples of the time – the ones creating the babies of the postwar suburban baby boom – might have felt awkwardly alarmed by the troubles of Dinah and Sam, brought to life by mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and baritone Nathan Gunn, two of opera’s finest singing actors at the height of their powers, in a wry comedy of cold clarity but also generosity of spirit.

At the Goodman Theatre, Leonard Bernstein’s musical ‘Wonderful Town’ starts busy season

2016-17 SEASON PREVIEW: The following is adapted from a news release submitted by an arts organization to Chicago On the Aisle.
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Lauren Molina and Bri Sudia star as two sisters leaving Ohio in 1935 to conquer New York City in Bernstein’s “Wonderful Town.” Here’s the Goodman Theatre’s complete line-up…

Theater 2015-16: ‘Disgraced,’ 4 world premieres accent a many-splendored season at Goodman

11th in a series of season previews

Musical Stars and Stripes will fly all summer as Grant Park celebrates American composers

Preview: The season programming of a major orchestra may offer a preponderance of German, Russian, and French music, but at this year’s Grant Park Music Festival, Americans make a greater showing. Now in its 81st season, the free Festival in downtown Millennium Park embodies the exploratory spirit of composers who have sought to create an intrinsically American music.

Behind forbidden love in ‘West Side Story,’ clashing views of what’s right in America

Preview: The crux of conflict in the musical “West Side Story” may be the time-honored insanity of warring factions – the Sharks and the Jets in this case – but the play is also a portrait of cultural assimilation and clashing perspectives on what an immigrant group has to gain and what it risks losing. This American classic comes to the Oriental Theatre on June 11 in a version modeled on the latest Broadway production, even to the use of Spanish dialogue.