The performance is a fascinating hybrid of ballet technique, modern drama and evocative projection design. Bringing the show fully to life is both the technical polish of the Joffrey dancers and their exceptional gift for acting that so vividly captures the difference between love and passion.
Lyric Opera
The true magic of the opera “The Factotum” is rooted in its seamless interweaving of countless musical styles that take operatic voices into the realm of funk, rap, hip-hop, gospel, R&B, barbershop quartet and even electronic.
Fairy tales do come true, but sometimes they arrive on the stage in the most fantastical way. “Hansel and Gretel” at the Lyric Opera House proves to be an altogether richly imaginative dramatic, musical and visual treat.
Maestro Enrique Mazzola took over as music director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2019 with grand plans for the 70-year-old institution. Then the pandemic hit.
A love affair between two artists who share a gift for letter-writing. And then a wonderfully devised celebration of Broadway classics. Talk about a study in contrasts. You could not have found a more ideal example of just such a pairing of personalities and styles than the unusual concert performed last week on the Lyric Opera stage by the golden-voiced soprano Renee Fleming and baritone Rod Gilfry, both of whom can shift easily between opera and musical theater.
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.
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.
The Joffrey Ballet’s latest production is John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men.” It’s a story that ends in tragedy — but the artists hope to highlight something else in their rendition.
“Fire Shut Up In My Bones” is based on a memoir by longtime New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow. Composed by Terence Blanchard, the story explores how Blow works to heal from traumatic incidents of abuse in his childhood.
Based on the 2014 memoir by New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, the opera’s title is drawn directly from the biblical story of Jeremiah, the severely persecuted “weeping prophet” known for his tender heart. But it is a deeply personal and contemporary story.
A brutal despot is the force behind much of the tragedy that unfolds in “Tosca.” The opera — with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa — is at once a love story, and the tale of artists who are destroyed by the twisted power broker who drives them to death.
“Florencia en el Amazonas” (“Florencia in the Amazon”), the first Spanish language opera to be performed on the Lyric Opera mainstage, is pure magic on every count.
Gaetano Donizetti’s beguiling romantic comedy is a delightful and winningly insightful tale of true love, money, egotism, self-doubt, wishful thinking and charlatanism. And, to top it all off, it comes with a happy ending.
The Lyric Opera production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Macbeth” — which marks both the ongoing pandemic-era reopening of the company’s renovated 3,200-seat theater, and the official start of Enrique Mazzola’s tenure as the company’s music director — is no standard witches’ brew.
After 15 months of dark theaters and livestreamed performances, two of Chicago’s most famous performing arts companies announce they are returning to the stage for live performances — this time under one roof.
With most traditional theater spaces off-limits and Zoom an increasingly annoying way to have to watch anything, two Chicago opera companies have demonstrated in radically different ways that “all the world is a stage” — or can be turned into one.
