Stefan Brion

Tomorrow, Lyric Opera of Chicago opens its season with a performance of Luigi Cherubini’s Medea starring Sondra Radvanovsky, yet Radvanovsky, who has performed the niche role numerous times including at the opening of the Met’s season in 2022, is not the only Medea on the market; today’s Grand Tier Grab Bag features two other murderous mommies, Chiara Isotton and Joyce El-Khoury, in the work’s final scene.

Isotton’s performance, recorded in Toronto in the spring of 2024, was supposed to be Radvanovsky’s, but the American soprano came down with laryngitis and the Italian soprano was called to substitute. She performs here opposite Matthew Polenzani, an experienced Giasone who will once again be jilting Radvanovsky in Chicago.

El-Khoury’s performance of the score’s original version (and not the better known version with Franz Lachner‘s recitatives) was recorded at the Opéra-Comique early last spring in a run also plagued by a cast illness. Parterre Box critic Nigel Wilkinson, who reported on the evening, said of the performance he saw, “Joyce El-Khoury relied on her experience, vocal technique and dramatic abilities to carry her through. […] But what a success she made of it, given the circumstances. I could only imagine what we’d missed.” Her Jason is the French tenor Julien Behr.

Another Medée, Marina Rebeka, was also felled by illness last spring, singing only two-and-a-half of the six performances for which she was announced in Milan. You can also hear her, from the opening night of that run, below:

Cherubini: “Eh quoi ! je suis Médée,” Medée

Joyce El-Khoury
Julien Behr

Laurence Equilbey, conductor
Insula Orchestra
Opéra-Comique, Paris
February 2025
In-house

Cherubini: “E che? Io son Medea,” Medea

Chiara Isotton
Matthew Polenzani

Lorenzo Passerini, conductor
Canadian Opera Company
Toronto
May 2024
In-house

Comments