A Season Long Salute to the Knight

Lyric Opera of Chicago

Lyric Opera of Chicago has announced its 2020/2021, promising blood and guts, love and jealousy, and a season-long celebration of Sir Andrew Davis, who is stepping down from his current position as music director at the season’s end.

For those opera fans who can’t be satisfied without a little carnage, Lyric brings us the duo of Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci, and Attila. If it’s the secret to love you’re after, Lyric offers the very draught, The Elixir of Love. Something in between? Tosca and Samson and Delilah are on offer as well. During this season-long gala for the Knight, Sir Andrew Davis will conduct Lessons in Love and Violence, The Marriage of Figaro, The Rake’s Progress, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Proving Up and Singin’ in the Rain round out the season.

The double-bill of Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci open the season, with Carlo Rizzi on the podium. Elena Pankratova and Ambrogio Maestri makes their Lyric debuts in Cavalleria rusticana. Brian Jagde (heard this season in Madame Butterfly) and Jill Grove (on the boards now in The Queen of Spades) also appear in the first half of the evening. The cast of Pagliacci includes Evgenia Muraveva, Russesll Thomas, Ambrogio Maestri, and two members of Lyric’s Ryan Center, Ricardo José Rivera and Mario Rojas.

Lessons in Love in Violence is one of two contemporary operas in English in Lyric’s 2020/2021 lineup. Composer George Benjamin and librettist Martin Crimp have created a political thrilled, set in a totalitarian regime. Both the queen and the king are committing adultery with their male lovers. A plot is concocted to murder the king’s lover and seize the throne. These machinations are not lost on the royal children, who learn this language with the amazing speed of youth. This work was co-commissioned by Lyric Opera, and it is one of the pieces that Sir Andrew Davis will conduct during the season. The cast will be announced at a later date.

Tosca will go on the boards next at Lyric. Unmatched for its vivid characterizations and pungent storytelling, this opera is one of the world’s favorites, and with Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role, the universe is sure to be thrown off its axis. Radvanovsky is one of the foremost interpreters of this role, but this is the first time Chicago will have seen her making that leap. Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja will sing the ill-fated lover Cavaradossi, and Fabian Veloz makes his Lyric debut as Scarpia. (On 11/28, Alexandra LoBianco and Russell Thomas are Tosca and Cavaradossi.)

Lyric’s music director designate Enrique Mazzola will then continue his Chicago exploration of the early works of Verdi with Attila. This dramatic tale of the lusts for love, power, and revenge will star Dmitry Belosselskiy, Tamara Wilson, Nicola Alaimo, and Matthew Polenzani in one of his two Lyric outings in the season.

Mazzola also conducts the next offering of the season, Proving Up, the first Lyric production to be seen at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. This story of Nebraska homesteaders in the 1870s, striving against odds to purchase the land they have settled, is uniquely American, and sung in English by a cast that will be announced at a later date. Composer Missy Mazzoli’s atmospheric compositional style along with Royce Vaverk’s gritty libretto are certain to please those in Lyric’s audience who clamor for contemporary opera. 

One of the great tragic love stories that sticks in the public consciousness is that of Samson and Delilah, and Lyric brings real star power to the cast of Camille Saint-Saëns’ opera in January and February, 2021.  With Clémentine Margaine as the temptress Delilah and Brandon Jovanovich as Samson, the production is sure to be a feast for the eyes and ears. Lyric Opera last visited this piece 17 years ago. Emmanuel Villaume conducts.

After so much obsessive love, next comes a love of a simpler variety with Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love. Matthew Polenzani follows up his Verdi outing earlier in the season with the lyrical role of Nemorino, the town’s simple fellow who longs for a lass considered by all (including herself) to be out of his league. This production is updated to the 1950s, with leading lady Adina (sung by Rose Feola) as the owner of a hotel where Nemorino is a waiter. While there is much humor to be found in earlier, this is Lyric’s first comic opera of the season, and by the beginning of 2021, we’ll be ready for it. 

Hot on its heels is another spritely comedy, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, giving Sir Andrew Davis an opportunity to take the podium for the opera that was his first outing at Lyric, and is one of his favorites. Directed by Barbara Gaines, the founder and artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the production is certain to be a success. The artists onstage will include Alex Esposito, Ying Fang, Federica Lombardi, and Gordon Bintner.

The opera season proper closes with the cautionary pastiche, The Rake’s Progress. Another of Sir Andrew’s favorites, this Stravinsky opera sports lovely, lyrical music and a plot that is vaguely reminiscent of Faust. The cast includes Andrew Staples, Janai Brugger, Luca Pisaroni, and Alice Coote, as directed by John Cox on the sets of David Hockney.

BUT there is so much more to the 2020/2021 season at Lyric Opera! There’s Singin’ in the Rain, soprano Christine Goerke in concert, and A Knight to Remember, a special concert event featuring Sir Andrew on the podium for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9!

Lyric Opera is granting us the marvelous opportunity to join in an extended thank-you to Sir Andrew Davis for his storied tenure and his contribution to the city as he steps away (for the moment), while welcoming in the designated music director, Enrique Mazzola.

Highly Recommended

By Aaron Hunt        

Presented September 17, 2020-June 27, 2021 by Lyric Opera of Chicago, 20 N. Wacker, Chicago.

Tickets are available in person at the theater box office, by calling 312-332-2244 or by going to lyricopera.org.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.