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.

“Sole e Amore,” Enrique Mazzola’s newest project, will include two dozen songs by seven of the most beloved Italian opera composers of the 19th century, performed by 11 members of the Ryan Opera Center, Lyric’s renowned artist development program.

Lyric Opera of Chicago has plans for a virtual concert Sunday unlike anything it has done before: a Spanish-language concert. We meet some of the artists involved with the premiere of “Pasión Latina.”

The coronavirus has shuttered concert venues around the world, but that hasn’t stopped artists and musicians from finding new ways to share their work. Soprano Renee Fleming tells us about Lyric’s upcoming concert.

This fall was to mark the Joffrey’s first season in its new home on the Lyric Opera stage after many years of residence at the Auditorium Theatre.

Lyric’s canceled productions of “42nd Street” and “Blue” are now slated to run in 2022 and 2021, respectively. Meanwhile, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is partnering with WFMT on a series beginning next week.

How the Chicago performing arts community is preparing for the uncertainty of the spring season.

The formidable full schedule will feature 10 major productions, eight of which will be “new to Chicago.” The season also will mark the grand finale of Sir Andrew Davis’ tenure as music director of the Lyric Opera.

Created for Broadway, “The Light in the Piazza” is a profoundly intimate work and belongs in a space that can fully embrace that intimacy. The Lyric Opera House, where it is now being presented, is not such a place. 

Following a run on London’s West End and at LA Opera, the Tony Award-winning musical “The Light in the Piazza” now comes to Chicago. We visited the cast during a recent rehearsal.

In “The Three Queens,” the trilogy of semi-staged excerpts about the lives of Anne Boleyn, Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth I now in a brief run at Lyric Opera, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky captures their essence to sublime vocal and dramatic effect.

The production, directed by Robert Falls (artistic director of the Goodman Theatre) is the finest work he has done on any stage since “The Iceman Cometh,” and it has been cast with glorious singers who also are exceptional actors.

It was a moving memoir that became an Oscar-winning film before premiering as an opera in 2000. After more than 60 productions around the world, “Dead Man Walking” is now headed to Lyric Opera of Chicago for the first time.

The Italian conductor has been named as “music director designate” at Lyric Opera Chicago, where Sir Andrew Davis will retire as music director at the end of the 2020-2021 season.

At once eerie, astonishing and altogether fascinating, “Maria Callas in Concert” recently brought the legendary diva back to life for what was a singular and wholly uncanny performance.