Henson Keys
Henson Keys (AKA "actfive") is a Chicago-based actor and director who fell in love with opera while working for the Met Ticket Service in NYC in the early 80's. An Equity actor since 1974, he has performed in over 130 roles in New York and regional repertory including 46 productions of Shakespeare. From 1999-2015 he was Chair of Acting Programs at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, having previously led programs at Ohio University and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. He also writes opera CD/DVD reviews for Opera News.
Whether Lyric Opera of Chicago is an appropriate venue for such an intimate, gentle show as The Light in the Piazza is a subject of much critical debate.
By Henson Keys
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Ryan McKinny’s Don is subtler, slyer, smoother, with a sharp wit and sense of dark humor that gives added dimension to the role.
By Henson Keys
It was a gloomy, chilly, rainy day in Chicago on Sunday afternoon, a perfect reflection of the sad and gloomy fates of the title characters in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s presentation of The Three Queens.
By Henson Keys
Lyric Opera of Chicago’as Don Giovanni lands smack dab in the middle of our current debate about wanted or unwanted sexual advances and outright sexual abuse.
By Henson Keys
Sunday’s matinee at Lyric Opera of Chicago was my first experience of Heggie and McNally’s 2000 opera Dead Man Walking. It certainly won’t be my last.
By Henson Keys
Luisa Miller snowballs toward disaster and death.
By Henson Keys
It’s an old chestnut of a joke that applies even more to opera than to the theatre: A veteran actor is on his deathbed.
By Henson Keys
In our current political climate with issues of immigration, tribalism, and white nationalists, the 1957 musical West Side Story has a distinctly contemporary feel.
By Henson Keys
Sunday’s “Rising Stars in Concert”, featuring the Ryan Opera Center ensemble and members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra, was a stirring and entertainingly musical afternoon.
By Henson Keys
Saturday night, Lyric Opera of Chicago gave us a wonderful evening of vocalism in honoring Renée Fleming’s 25th anniversary at Lyric.
By Henson Keys
All these events are simply too big for a one-act opera.
By Henson Keys
It’s been a rough winter in Chicago, and an especially rough one for lead singers at Lyric Opera of Chicago
By Henson Keys
Those of us who were hoping for “a star is born” performance were, alas, disappointed.
By Henson Keys
Of course, Stemme had the character’s frenzied fury at her father’s murderers in hand, but she had far more nuance—at times this Elektra was seductive, sympathetic, loving, even humorous in her bitterness.
By Henson Keys
Jules Massenet’s version of the Cinderella fairy tale, Cendrillon, seems to be back in vogue after many years of obscurity.
By Henson Keys
Anna Netrebko sang throughout with a palpable sense of joy and ease in vocal production, never a hint of strain or any moment forced.
By Henson Keys
If sheer clarion vocalism is what draws you to the opera, then hie thee to Lyric Opera of Chicago’s rousing revival Of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, the oddly plotted but musically sublime opera that opened last night in the David McVicar production, originally seen in 2006.
By Henson Keys
Director David Pountney and his splendid designers have brought Lyric Opera of Chicago a visually spectacular Siegfried full of daring ideas.
By Henson Keys
Those readers who know my musical tastes will not be shocked to find that I have a somewhat conflicted view of Mozart’s operatic works.
By Henson Keys
Lyric Opera of Chicago resumed its season on Wednesday evening with the new-to-Chicago production of Puccini’s perennial audience pleaser La bohème.
By Henson Keys
The Stars of Lyric Opera weren’t under the stars last night, prevented by a persistent cloud bank, but they nonetheless provided a stirring evening of music in Chicago’s Millennium Park.
By Henson Keys
Just a few years back it would have been seen as ridiculous to put “Lyric Opera of Chicago” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” in the same sentence.
By Henson Keys
I found Fellow Travelers intellectually and politically riveting, musically thrilling, and profoundly moving. It was a triumph.
By Henson Keys
The production is at all times visually arresting, but it’s also extremely distracting.
By Henson Keys
