Opera is an expensive enterprise. And in these treacherous economic times, producing opera for many local companies has become an exercise in finding economical ways to make it work.
Two suburban companies have had to scale back out of economic necessity. For the past few years, Elgin Opera has been doing mostly highlights concerts instead of staging full-fledged productions. And DuPage Opera Theatre's recent production of Puccini's Turandot was done as a concert staging sans elaborate sets.
Even the mighty Lyric Opera of Chicago has had to make changes for next season. The company is still presenting its usual number of eight operas: Verdi's Macbeth, Bizet's Carmen, Britten's A Midsummer's Night Dream, Verdi's A Masked Ball, Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado, Puccini's Girl of the Golden West, Wagner's Lohengrin and Handel's Hercules. But the Lyric has cut back the number of overall performances from 77 to 68.
Chicago Opera Theater is similarly scaling back in the number of performances for its upcoming spring repertory season of Rossini's Moses in Egypt ( April 17-25 ) , Cavalli's Jason ( April 24-May 2 ) and the Chicago premiere of Three Decembers ( May 8-16 ) by out composer Jake Heggie based upon a work by out playwright Terrence McNally ( Three Decembers is also supposedly the final Chicago opera appearances by the legendary mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade ) . Instead of five performances of each opera, there are only four.
But out of economic necessity, creativity can also be spurred. The scrappy new company Chicago Opera Vanguard has increasingly made a name around town by producing local premieres of adventurous ( and small-scale ) works like Mark Anthony Turnage's Greek and Ricky Ian Gordon's Orpheus and Eurdice.
After presenting the Chicago premiere of Andy Vores' No Exit ( based upon the Jean Paul Sartre play ) , Chicago Opera Vanguard continues its first official season of "off-Loop opera" with a staging of Schubert's classic song cycle Winterreise March 3-21 in the Fasseas White Box Theatre of the Menomonee Club Drucker Center, 1535 N. Dayton.
Winterreise has been famously staged before in 2002 by choreographer Trisha Brown with hunky British baritone Simon Keenlyside. But her production never made it to Chicago, so we'll gladly take one by director/producer Eric Reda.
Winterreise is typically presented in a concert setting, so it should be interesting to see how Reda dramatizes it with baritone Brad Jungwirth, music director Myron Silberstein and a company possibly of dancers or actors featuring Brian Barber, Sophie Gatins and Jessica Sheffield.
Hopefully, Chicago Opera Vanguard's Winterreise will attract more traditional classical audiences to join with their new music fans. For more information, visit www.chicagovanguard.org .
For its 2009-10 season, Chamber Opera Chicago has also scaled back a bit by reducing its number of productions down to three. Following a Christmastime revival of Menotti's Amhal and the Night Visitors and preceding the Cuban zarazuela Maria La O in June, Chamber Opera Chicago makes news by presenting the Chicago premiere of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: The New Musical.
More than just a retelling of the classic novel, this Pride and Prejudice musical by Lindsay Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs also focuses on Austen as a character who wields her creative force throughout by composing the novel.
Pride and Prejudice plays the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 27 and March 6, and at 3 p.m. March 7. For more information, visit www.chamberoperachicago.org .
More operatic offerings
The coming weeks also feature some notable classical vocal concerts that should be of interest to baroque and new music fans.
Music of the Baroque shines a spotlight on Handel and his creative relationship with Great Britain's royal family with the concert Handel and the Royals. Music director Jane Glover conducts big choral pieces like the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline, the Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne and the Anthem for the Wedding of Prince Frederick and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Coburg.
Baroque music enthusiasts and British history buffs won't want to miss Handel and the Royals, which will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 28, at Evanston's First United Methodist Church, 516 Church, and also in Chicago at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 1, at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph. For tickets and more information, visit www.baroque.org .
The hip and youthful Grammy Award-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird teams up with famed music theater performer Rinde Eckert and composer/performer Steve Mackey for the concert-length theater work Slide.
Focusing on a psychologist ( played by Eckert ) who attempts to explain an experiment on people's reactions to in-focus and out-of-focus slides, Slide aims to become a metaphor for today's media-saturated world and its hold on the American psyche.
The multimedia-saturated show plays locally only at 7:30 p.m. Wed., March 24, at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. For more information on Slide, visit www.harristheaterchicago.org or www.eighthblackbird.com .
Please send along theater news and other tidbits to scottishplayscott@yahoo.com and to Andrew@windycitymediagroup.com .
