What truly set Orchestra Hall on fire came in the second half of the program as Maestro Riccardo Muti, in subtle but wonderfully expressive balletic form, led an altogether blazing performance of Prokofiev’s “Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major,” a 1944 masterwork composed at the height of World War II.
Hedy Weiss
Lynn Nottage’s most recent play, “Clyde’s — a nominee at last year’s Tony Awards that is now receiving a production at the Goodman Theatre — deals with a rarely explored but crucial issue. It’s the matter of the extreme difficulty faced by those who have been incarcerated and who, upon release, find it all but impossible to find a job.
One day before Ukraine was invaded by Russia earlier this year, the company unknowingly boarded one of the last flights out of Kyiv to Paris, the first stop on a planned tour. The company has not returned home since then.
If you needed to be reminded of the glorious sound Maestro Riccardo Muti has nurtured during his 13-year tenure as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Thursday evening’s concert, marking the start of the 2022-23 season, served as a perfect example.
This weekend marks the beginning of the end of Maestro Riccardo Muti’s tenure as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. WTTW News visited Symphony Center to hear him lead the orchestra in a rousing rehearsal of works by Tchaikovsky.
“The Garbologists” is an engaging, sharply written, and cleverly titled two-character play by Lindsay Joelle now receiving its first professional production by Northlight Theatre. The production follows two garbage collectors who have a competitive tension and developing connection.
Scaled to opera house grandeur, the production involves a total of 100 performers including a cast of strong actors, an ensemble of sensational dancers, a large chorus and the full Lyric Opera Orchestra.
In addition to its ideal cast, it is the seamless and often breathtaking dance sequences that set this production of “Hello, Dolly!” at Marriott Theatre apart.
“I don’t come here to shame the founders (of our country), or in the case of my play, their spouses,” playwright James Ijames writes. “I come here to test the strength of their ideals.”
Court Theatre has opened its 2022-23 season with “Arsenic and Old Lace,” Joseph Kesselring’s maniacally zany 1941 Broadway hit that is probably most widely known by way of its 1944 film version starring Cary Grant and Boris Karloff.
“It Starts Now” is not an easy work to describe. It is a transfixing physical manifestation of human existence — epic in its emotional tension, its simultaneously real and mystical aura and its remarkable dancing.
It was in 1919 that Chagall assumed the position of commissar of arts for Vitebsk and founded the Vitebsk Art School, which opened its doors to all who wanted to pursue their artistic dreams. That marks the setting for a world premiere play.
Both events served as the latest vivid illustration of why 2022 has rightly been designated “The Year of Chicago Dance.”
“Chopin & Liszt in Paris” is the latest “musical film” created by Hershey Felder, widely known to Chicago audiences for his years of live performances in the city. Felder portrays the flamboyant Liszt, but he performs a great deal of Chopin’s music as he spins the story of his complex artistic relationship with that composer.
On Sunday evening, in the wake of a thunderous few days of the Chicago Air and Water Show, Enrique Mazzola, Lyric Opera’s Music Director (along with Donald Lee III, the inaugural Ryan Opera Center conductor/pianist), led the Lyric Opera Orchestra and singers from the Ryan Opera Center’s esteemed training center on the same stage of the Pritzker Pavillion.
Despite its many virtues and ambitious grand-scale staging, strong voices, daring swordplay, flamenco gypsy dances, lavish costumes, a tale of bitter sibling rivalry, political oppression and romance, plus the rousing music of the Gipsy Kings (including the irresistible “Bamboleo”) this take on the “Zorro” story needs work.
