Lesbian mezzo-soprano Jill Grove has appeared in some of the most critically acclaimed new recent productions at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Who could forget her topless tribal Klytamnestra waging interfamily battle in Richard Strauss' Greek tragedy Elektra in 2012? Or Grove as the earthy swamp witch Jezibaba in Antonin Dvorak's Rusalka in 2014?
Now Grove gets to put her stamp on a completely new role for the Lyric. Grove stars as the grandmother Regina Segal in the world premiere of The Property, a chamber opera scored for members of the Chicago-area Maxwell Street Klezmer Band that was commissioned by the Lyric to play as a compliment to its premiere of Mieczyslaw Weinberg's 1968 opera The Passenger, which deals with the Holocaust.
"I love Lyric Opera of Chicago and so I would pretty much do anything for them," said Grove via telephone after a recent rehearsal for The Property. "It's an opportunity to play a normal, regular woman instead of a witch, or you know, a mother from hell."
The Property is inspired by a graphic novel by Israeli author Rutu Modan, and it tells the story of a grandmother and her granddaughter, Mica ( soprano Anne Slovin ), who travel to Warsaw to reclaim a family property that was lost during World War II. But Regina and her granddaughter face some uncomfortable truths about their past as they encounter people there like former family friend Roman Gorski ( baritone James Maddalena ) and their Polish tour guide, Tomasz ( baritone Nathaniel Olson ).
The Property features a score by Los Angeles-based Polish composer Wlad Marhulets, with a libretto by Stephanie Fleishchmann who adapted the novel with director Eric Einhorn. It's sung in English, though there are times when Grove and company have to sing in Hebrew and Polish, too.
"It's a beautiful, intimate and lovely little chamber opera, and it's wonderful creating a role," said Grove, noting how Marhulets is essentially fitting the character of Regina to her voice. "He's asked, 'How high do you want to sing?' 'How low do you want to sing?' So it's really been tailored to what I like to sing."
And because The Property is a new opera, Grove gets to put her stamp on the role and bring her own physicality to it instead of being compared to a string of other singers who have played iconic roles and applied expected singing and staging templates to works in the standard operatic repertory.
Grove said she knows that the smaller venues at the University of Chicago and in Skokie, where The Property will be performed, will bring greater scrutiny to her performance—especially when compared to the Lyric's magnificent and massive art deco Civic Opera House, where she has previously triumphed in works like Lulu, Hansel & Gretel and Wagner's Ring Cycle.
"It's all very exciting, but it's also frightening as well," Grove said. "Doing something a little more intimate is great. It's allowing me to exercise some different acting and singing muscles instead of just singing full-out opera all the time. I'm honored and very happy that they've asked me to be a part of this project."
Lyric audiences will get to see Grove again next season in a new staging of Alban Berg's Wozzeck by out director Sir David McVicar, and she's keen to find out his approach to the expressionistic 1925 opera especially after she had such critical acclaim in his Lyric productions of Elektra and Rusalka. And for those opera fans who like to travel, Grove appears in the remainder of the current season in Rusalka for Houston Grand Opera and in Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress for Utah Opera which is using the acclaimed 1970s production by gay British artist David Hockney.
"Being a working mom and opera singer is always challenging," said Grove when asked about her life as a co-parent with her ex-wife to her soon to be seven-year-old son, Gryffen. "And trying to keep a personal life on the road is difficult, but I'm certainly giving it a good try."
The world premiere of The Property is performed at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 25 and 26 and 1 p.m. Feb. 27 at the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, 915 E. 60th St., then at 7:30 p.m. March 4 and 5 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie. Sung in English with some Hebrew and Polish. Tickets are $20-$40; call 312-827-5600 or Chicago performances, or 847-673-6300 for Skokie performances.
The Lyric Opera of Chicago premiere of The Passenger continues at the Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Dr. Sung in multiple languages with projected English translations. Tickets are $20-$369; call 312-827-5600 or visit www.lyricopera.org for more information.
