The Lyric Opera of Chicago continues its 50th season with Beethoven’s Fidelio, an opera not often staged in the repertoire of great opera houses. Perhaps it is the political tone […]
There has been a lot of discourse on the survival of opera companies in America. Even the revered Met has met criticisms for everything from the artistic direction and performance […]
Guiseppe Verdi’s Aida is perhaps one of his best-known operas and of all Italian operas. It has the treachery, aching love, and tragedy that befalls the great heroines of this […]
Champion is the story of welterweight boxer Emile Griffith’s career in boxing with a life-defining fatal bout in 1962 against Benny “Kid” Paret. I believe that an opera in jazz […]
I have four copies of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in my library and while I have a weird fondness for dark morality tales, I also enjoy the story of the stepchild […]
The Chicago Opera Theater COT) has a mission to produce new and rarely produced work. Dmitri Shostakovich was 22 years old when he wrote The Nose adapted from the short […]
The basic plot of the famous The Nutcracker ballet is a familiar story. A young girl, Clara, receives the gift of a Nutcracker on Christmas Eve. That night, she has […]
Soldier Songs is a solo operatic performance that blends the genres of classical and heavy metal. I thought that I had never heard anything like it, however, the parallels between […]
The Lyric Opera has produced some of the finest interpretations of Richard Wagner in the world of opera and the season opener of The Flying Dutchman may be my favorite. […]
Poet Maya Angelou suffered violence and didn’t speak for years. Tommy Walker witnessed murder and similarly shut down his senses to deal with that trauma. His fictional narrative was created […]
Choreography by Jerome Robbins, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and music by Leonard Bernstein are the calling cards of West Side Story. This is an energetic and passionate contemporary retelling directed […]
.Composer Justine Chen and librettist David Simpatico have worked for over a decade to bring The Life and Death[s] of Alan Turing to the opera stage. It was commissioned in […]