Chicago Opera Theater ( COT ) used to overlap its season slightly with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. But that changed as COT had to contend with a scheduling logjam of other groups and presenters clamoring to get into the Harris Theater for Music and Dance at Millennium Park, 205 E. Randolph.
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A Flowering Tree model by production designer George Souglides.
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Now, COT's season runs from late April through May, giving opera buffs from Chicago and out of town a breather from the end of the Lyric's season before indulging again in the opera-going habit.
The 2008 season certainly looks like it's one of COT's most promising: Mozart's Don Giovanni, John Adams' A Flowering Tree and Handel's Orlando. 'Don Giovanni is going to be a great kick off to the season,' said COT General Director Brian Dickie. 'Especially with such a well-known title.'
As regular COT fans know, many of Mozart's works written with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte have been brilliantly updated by director Diane Paulus and conductor Jane Glover to modern locales: Cosi Fan Tutti looked for love in a swank singles bar while The Marriage of Figaro was celebrated in South Beach, Fla.
Paulus' approach to Don Giovanni, the 1787 opera where Don Juan gets his comeuppance, is to transfer him to a high-end night club in New York.
'The proprietor is Don Giovanni,' Dickie said. 'I don't think I can reveal the actual club it's based upon because Diane is friends with the man who runs it.'
COT's next offering is something of an artistic coup for the company: the American stage premiere of John Adams' 2006 opera A Flowering Tree.
Adams has openly acknowledged that A Flowering Tree is his operatic response to Mozart's The Magic Flute. It's a South Indian folktale about a woman who transforms herself into a flowering tree to provide her poor family with something to sell. Of course, trouble ensues when a prince gets mixed up in the tale.
Originally performed in Vienna as a semi-staged concert by director and co-librettist Peter Sellars, A Flowering Tree grows as fully staged opera by director Nicola Raab ( who staged last season's Beatrice et Benedict ) . Dickie assured that George Souglides' production design is very Indian-flavored.
'I think [ John Adams ] was very impressed about our whole attitude to him,' Dickie hypothesized following COT's 2006 production of Adams 1987 landmark opera Nixon in China. ' [ Adams ] is conducting the first two performances, and you can't demonstrate your commitment more than that.' ( Joana Carneiro conducts the final three performances ) .
More updating is in store for COT's final production, Handel's Orlando. Australian director Justin Way uses the paranoia of 1940s film noir to tie into this 1773 opera of a valiant soldier who goes slightly off the deep end when he discovers the woman he loves longs for someone else.
Dickie is particularly excited to have British countertenor Tim Mead make his Chicago debut after he saw him go on for gay countertenor star David Daniels at the Glyndebourne Festival's 2006 revival of Giulio Cesare ( Julius Caesar ) .
' [ Mead ] was going to audition for me the next day,' Dickie said. 'He sang the performance which turned out to be a four-and-half-hour audition. Needless to say, I hired him on the spot without any question to do Orlando for us.'
Designers Andrew Hays and Kimm Kovac team for the sometimes surrealist look of the production, while Raymond Leppard conducts.
As for COT's future, the company has already announced big plans for its 35th anniversary in 2009. That's when the company moves to a 'spring festival' with a rotating repertory of its premieres of Britten's Owen Wingrave, Peter Brook's adaptation of La tragedie de Carmen and Mozart's La clemenza di Tito. That now makes it possible to catch two COT operas in one weekend.
COT has also generated buzz for its 2010 season with its 'People's Opera' initiative, where the audience gets to vote on one of the three operas in the repertory. By contributing a dollar to COT, a person can cast one vote for one of three operas chosen by Dickie. If one wants to get overly political, that person can court the gay vote for Britten and W.H. Auden's Paul Bunyan ( creators who were, more or less, out during their lifetimes ) , religious conservatives for Rossini's Moses in Egypt ( subject matter alone ) or the youth vote for Mozart's La finta giardiniera ( written when he was only 18 ) .
Don Giovanni, A Flowering Tree and Orlando each play five performances at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Millennium Park, 205 E. Randolph. For more details on Chicago Opera Theater's season and future planning, visit www.chicagooperatheater.org or call 312-704-8420.