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.
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. But the times they are a-changin’, and last night the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice rock opera opened for a month’s run, shaking up the staid Civic Opera House. 
Lyric Opera Unlimited, the education and outreach program of Lyric Opera of Chicago, has done our fair city a great favor by producing Fellow Travelers, the new Gregory Spears–Greg Pierce opera commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera in 2016. I caught the last of four performances on Sunday afternoon in the beautiful, old 984-seat Athenaeum Theatre in Chicago. I found the performance intellectually and politically riveting, musically thrilling, and profoundly moving. It was a triumph. 
The work of the sculptor John Frame (here serving as Production Designer) is the inspiration for Kevin Newbury’s new production of Gounod’s familiar Faust that opened Saturday night at Lyric Opera of Chicago. Here Faust is envisioned as an aging artist, and it is in his studio that the opera begins. Faust has created a sculpture of Mephistopheles, and it comes to life through the use of multi-media screens and projections. Once Mephistopheles arrives, we move through the opera as if seeing it inside Faust’s head. 
Cher Public