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A revival of Richard Jones’ production of Handel’s emotionally probing opera. 

Fellow Travelers is shot through with darkness, making for a chilling performance by Lyric Opera of Chicago. 

Chicago's new Faust is a quest for youth but also a reflection on insipiration, fabrication and manipulation. 

Synergies between singers compensated for accurate but unexciting orchestral playing.

David Pountney's new production of Die Walküre for the Lyric Opera of Chicago incisively charts the tectonic shift of control over the future from Wotan to Brünnhilde.

The Lyric Opera’s new production of Rigoletto evokes visually the contours and high-contrast relief of a surrealist painting. 

Dance takes center stage in Lyric Opera of Chicago's bold season-opening co-production of Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice.

The finale was the dramatic and musical high of the night, when both Ana María Martínez and Mariusz Kwiecień let themselves cut loose, laying waste to the bare stage.

The Lyric Opera’s new production of Carmen is lusciously embodied, with expressionistic splashes of colour against a quasi-modern backdrop. 

In the end, Newbury’s production leaves you with more questions than it answers. 

Setting the opera in the backyard of a suburban house feels refreshingly honest: the ridiculous and simplistic tale of the evil witch, the prince and the maiden is rightfully returned to the arena of children's games, and adults look on indulgently, with a wink.

This production, directed by Tim Albery and with sets and costumes by Tobias Hoheisel, boasts more than one megastar.

Strong vocal talent rules the night, and a late moment of visual splendor caps off a serviceable reading of a battered warhorse.

In spite of some questionable staging, Lyric Opera of Chicago opened its Ring cycle on a strong note with a stellar cast, notably featuring Eric Owens’ role debut as Wotan.

It is the fusion of textures and styles coming from the pit that gives Bel Canto a memorable musical profile.

A star-studded cast headlined by Isabel Leonard and Lawrence Browlee share a hilarious production of La Cenerentola – complete with rat ballet corps!

What makes this Figaro memorable and admirable is the way it manages both to be sprightly in its tone and details and also luxuriant in places that another director might have blown through.

David Pountney's production of Mieczysław Weinberg's opera The Passenger travels to Chicago. 

Amber Wagner sings Elisabeth with a deepened command and an access to a horizon of sound that make it seem as though her throat had found six more inches of release. It’s a phenomenal performance.

American tenor Brian Jagde is the standout in this Tosca, with just those notes of honey and throatiness that seem to wrap up an orchestra’s sound and deliver the whole package to your front door, no signature needed.

American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky is the reason to see Anna Bolena, though the production provides plenty of other reasons to stay. 

The marriage between performers and score here is perfect, because Gershwin’s text-setting is near-miraculous, somehow every word is clear and seems to be naturally inflected by the curvature of the musical line.

The Il trovatore on offer at the Lyric this month would make a fine CD, its vocal strengths to be found equally among the leading foursome, but its weaknesses are visual and dramaturgical, and these are plenty too.

Late in the opera, in the calm that settles after a vaudeville of ballet dancers and Italian singers, Fleming’s poise pervades the Countess’s closing rumination over love and the nature of art. It’s a concert piece nestled in Capriccio’s narrative bustle, and to hear Fleming sing it is to be reminded of her talents as a communicator in music within and beyond the opera stage.

This production's consistent visual beauty forms the setting for this Don’s musical approach. It is a testament to this ensemble that Mariusz Kwiecień can’t steal the show in spite of his utterly commanding physical and vocal presence as the Don.

Of all the mischievous dramatic reversals that line Rigoletto’s plot – the hunchbacked jester tricked into abducting his own daughter, the daughter tricked into loving the brainless Duke (posing as a penniless student), and the terrifying reunion of father and daughter in a scene of murder – is not the most breathtaking, after all, the fact that the opera begins with a convincing display of the de

On Friday, a new co-production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg opened at the Lyric. The only comedy among Wagner’s mature music dramas, its sound is very much like that of the better-known tragedies – brassy, overfull, with a core of strings teetering at vibrato’s edge.

On Monday night – and, one might guess from the way the opera crowd gripped their collars as they swept into the Civic Opera House, the coldest night in Chicago this winter – a new La Bohème opened at the Lyric (it’s on loan from the San Francisco opera).

“Nibble, nibble, like a mouse – who is nibbling at my house?” As a preschooler, I used to giggle with glee when I would hear this quote from the wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel. No doubt the story was dark, yet Eloise Wilkin’s delightful illustrations and the touching message of brother/sister love enticed me to return frequently to this beloved tale during nightly story time.

The human race craves comic relief... a universally accepted fact throughout the entire history of mankind. Comic books, sitcoms, comic theater... all seek to blissfully whisk us out of the doldrums and politics of today’s ever-busy society.

In Francisco Negrin’s production of Massenet’s Werther, currently at the Lyric Opera, the opera’s first scene appears through a semi-transparent screen upon which an image of a row of houses is projected. Then the screen rises, and we enter fully into the dream.