With the orchestra strike happily settled, Lyric Opera of Chicago resumed its season on Wednesday evening with the new-to-Chicago production of Puccini’s perennial audience pleaser La bohème. It was a spectacularly sung, dramatically riveting evening surrounded by a production by Richard Jones that only really worked for one of the opera’s four acts. Read more »
BREAKING: The Chicago Federation of Musicians (CFM) Local #10-208 is striking against Lyric Opera of Chicago. In a statement, the company warned this action may lead to canceled performances.
This riotous opera transports the Oedipus tale to an apocalyptic 1980s London, plagued by police violence, racism, and socioeconomic decay. Intrepid composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s (Anna Nicole) 1988 breakthrough brilliantly combines cockney-accented profanity and irreverent drama with an audacious score and outstanding four-person cast. Eddy (tenor Alex Otterburn), our modern-day Oedipus, dreams of a better life. After hearing a fortune teller’s disturbing prediction, he resolves at all costs to avoid shagging his own mum (soprano Susan Bullock) and inadvertently killing his father (tenor Andrew Shore). But he is unable to outrun fate, landing in the prophetically maternal arms of an East End café manager (mezzo soprano Allison Cook). Thirty years later, Greek still resonates, offering an incisive, brash contemporary statement on accountability and family. Read more »
Domingo Hindoyan “got the major climaxes right.”
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 at the annual free concert, held at the magnificent Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park. It was an ideal venue to showcase Lyric Opera’s orchestra, chorus, and soloists, offering a preview of the upcoming season that opens with La Boheme on October 6. Read more »
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.
I found Fellow Travelers intellectually and politically riveting, musically thrilling, and profoundly moving. It was a triumph.
The production is at all times visually arresting, but it’s also extremely distracting.
It was an afternoon of spectacular singing, particularly from the two principals and the glorious Lyric Opera Chorus.
“It’s quite a coup to have Alice Coote starring in not one but two company premieres at Lyric next season.”
Cher Public