Dialogs: “Talking Race at the Opera” by the Chicago Humanities Festival
I gave high praise to Terence Blanchard’s opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones. The opening night performance at the…
Review: The Peculiar Grace of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones at Lyric Opera
My first opera was at age 10 when our parish priest took us to see La Boheme at the Lyric…
Review: Lyric’s Macbeth Delivers the Sound and Fury in Return to Live Performance
Lyric Opera of Chicago opened its 2021-22 comeback season September 17 with Giuseppe Verdi’s 1847 interpretation of William Shakespeare’s 1606…
Socially Distanced Chicago Christmas Gift Guide 2020
2020 is weird, and there’s no sense not acknowledging the differences between this and most other holiday seasons, if even…
Review: Holo-rifficMaria Callas in Concert at Lyric Opera
There was some life in this death. BASE Hologram and director Stephen Wadsworth resurrected soprano Maria Callas 42 years after…
Preview: Make Music Chicago Celebrates the Solstice on Friday
As the sun rises at what annually is its most northerly point on the horizon, sound artists and Rogers Park…
Fleming Fêted at the Lyric Opera; to Star in A Light in the Piazza in December
Chicago’s Lyric Opera fêted their fabulous creative consultant Renée Fleming last week. She debuted on that stage on October 9,…
Review: La Divina Tells Her Own Story in Maria By Callas
I’ve attended more opera in the last year than I have in all my years of attending theater (and that’s…
Review: Lyric Opera Launches a Strong 64th Season with Moving, Minimalist La Bohème
There are certain experiences, certain accomplishments that, understandably, pop up on most people’s Bucket Lists, those to-do lists of what…
God Is in the Details of Lyric Opera’s Jesus Christ Superstar
I don’t like musicals. I’m an atheist. I love Jesus Christ Superstar. I was a budding theater nerd when my…
Review: Sensory Overload Detracts from Lyric’s New Faust
If Lin-Manuel Miranda reinvented the modern American musical with Hamilton in 2015, one could say John Frame, production designer on…
Screens Monthly: March
March comes in like a lion…as the saying goes. Our latest slate of cinematic options fits the bill this month,…
