Salome sweeps in like a storm at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Since I began regularly attending performances at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1999, I have been a great admirer of director Francesca Zambello’s productions.
I had some trepidation about attending Terence Blanchard’s opera Champion because the “sport” of boxing has never appealed to me.
I’ve never had a better time in an opera house.
Leos Janacek’s 1904 opera Jenufa could be a rather grim affair.
Instead of following the story, we in the audience spend most of the evening thinking “What?? Why is that happening?”
Lyric Opera of Chicago has brought back its wildly successful 2019 production of West Side Story, directed by Francesca Zambello. I thought it was terrific back then and, even with numerous cast changes, it was just as terrific on Sunday afternoon.
Unfortunately, LOC’s Proximity works only fitfully.
Following the great success of its new piece The Factotum, Lyric Opera of Chicago returned to the tried and true with the audience-pleaser Carmen in an equally tried and true 20-year old Lyric production that has stood the test of time.
Director Richard Jones’ well-traveled and visually arresting production of Humperdinck’s 1893 opera Hansel and Gretel has returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago after a 10-year absence.
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Don Carlos was a real feast of good singing and orchestral grandeur.
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Le Comte Ory was a lovely cake with waaaay too much frosting.
Director Barrie Kosky brings to Fiddler on the Roof fascinating ideas, fine casting, equal mixes of comedy and sadness, and, from the beginning, a sense for we of the audience that we were about to spend three hours in very good hands.
LOC’s Ernani is a satisfying evening of Verdi sung by four stars at the height of their powers.
A co-production of Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, and Los Angeles Opera, Fire Shut Up In My Bones blazed into Chicago as a stunning, highly emotional and moving performance.
I must confess to feeling a bit of “Tosca fatigue” as I entered the Lyric Opera of Chicago house for Wednesday’s matinee of the Puccini standard.
There is sensory overload, and very little humanity.
This is an exuberant, uplifting, and joyous Elisir, and, for once, it was actually laugh-out-loud funny.
Original Director Richard Jones and revival director Benjamin Davis have created a staging that veers wildly between fascinating and fatally flawed.
Winter weather has taken a toll on the cast of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s revival of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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