Barnaby Hughes

LUISA MILLER GETS ROUGH TREATMENT Verdi’s Luisa Miller has only been produced at Lyric Opera once before, and that was thirty-seven years ago! For its rarity alone, this production should be seen. It is also features an incredibly haunting score that often slips into minor keys. The singing is almost uniformly excellent, but the casting…

A SHEER DELIGHT; A CUT ABOVE Opening night of the season is typically an opportunity to enjoy some people watching on the red carpet, a classic, accessible, and not-too-serious opera, and an early night (since the opera starts at 6pm). Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816) delivered superbly on all three counts, despite the…

MISSING A FEW NOTES It’s quite a treat to have two Verdi operas in one season, especially two of the composer’s best. Yet neither of these similarly named operas gets a new production. Whereas Il Trovatore had first been performed during the 2014/15 season, so La Traviata was performed in 2013/14. I did not see…

AN ELEKTRA WITHOUT ELEKTRICITY The first show I ever reviewed in Chicago was The Hypocrites’ All Our Tragic at the Den Theatre, a marathon twelve-hour distillation of every surviving Greek tragedy. It was an extraordinary experience. I’ve also seen a one-night performance of the complete Oresteia of Aeschylus and read both Sophocles’ and Euripedes’ versions…

I TELL OF A HELL OF A CINDERELLA Never before performed at Lyric Opera, Jules Massenet’s Cendrillon cannot be more delightful, especially for those who love the lightness of French opera. Indeed, it is the only French opera programmed this season, and the second Massenet in three years. The score’s exuberance and playfulness is reminiscent…

A FORMIDABLE CAST CASTS ITS CAST AROUND YOUR HEART Perhaps Verdi’s most popular opera, Il Trovatore (The Troubadour) was revived at Lyric as recently as the 2014/15 season, which itself was a revival production. Now as then, audiences are transported back in time to experience Sir David McVicar’s Goya-esque interpretation of Verdi’s gypsy drama. While…

FANTASTIC FANTASY, BUT STILL LEAVES YOU FRIED Beautiful. Exhausting. Whimsical. That’s how I would describe Siegfried  — in that order. The third installment of Richard Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle has all the gorgeous music you would expect, played by an excellent orchestra and sung by an international cast of musician-actors. At a run-time of five hours,…

IDOMENABLE After nearly a week of striking musicians and cancelled performances, Lyric Opera is now back on schedule and giving audiences what they want. With Mozart’s Idomeneo, audiences are more likely getting what they didn’t know they wanted because they’ve never experienced this opera before. Last performed at Lyric during the 1997-98 season, Idomeneo is…

PUCCINI’S PARISIAN OPERA ROMANCES AND ENCHANTS Lyric Opera’s 64th season opened with fizz, frocks, and fanfare last night. Once the red carpet had emptied and the evening’s audience settled into their seats with tumblers of wine, the curtain rose and the music began — and what a magical experience it was. The ladies in glamorous…

A PRODUCTION TO COSÌ UP TO A Lyric Opera season would not be complete without Mozart, so it was with great anticipation that I attended the opening night performance of Così Fan Tutte. Although this production is not new to Chicago, having been seen during the 2006-07 season, it remains fairly fresh due to its…

BELLINI’S BEL CANTO BRITISH BALLAD After the questionable orientalism of Bizet’s Pearl Fishers and Puccini’s Turandot, Lyric audiences can now enjoy Vincenzo Bellini’s I Puritani (The Puritans), a cultural encounter of a different kind. It is an Italian opera composed for a French audience and set during the English Civil War. This is perhaps not…

DIVING INTO ESCAPIST ENTERTAINMENT If opera is an escapist medium, transporting audiences to a distant time and place, then Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers is wonderfully paradigmatic. Set in Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) at an unspecified time, though likely before the advent of Europeans in the sixteenth century, the opera exudes exoticism at every turn. In…