Lyric Opera of Chicago

Tosca

By Giacomo Puccini, Conducted by Eun Sun Kim, Directed by Louisa Muller. The 2021 production of Tosca made Lyric history as two Black artists took the stage together in the roles of Tosca (Michelle Bradley) and Mario (Russell Thomas), alongside Uniting Voices Chicago children’s choir.

Inside the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, a marble altar stands at the center, draped with several white and gold vestments. Immediately beyond the altar, a tall, iron gate fill the width of the sanctuary. High, stone arches stretch back along both sides of the church, rising to a high, arched, stone ceiling. Windows along the top of the columns allow natural light to penetrate the space.

Dead Man Walking

By Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally, Conducted by Nicole Paiement, Directed by Leonard Foglia. Based on real-life events, the story explores the nature of friendship and forgiveness across a myriad of different spaces including a moonlit night in Louisiana, a prison yard, and a courthouse, as well as through black and white video projected onto the sets.

The curtain rises on a warm, deep-blue, moonlit night in rural Louisiana. A blue convertible in the center stands parked in a clearing between two rows of tall, evenly spaced, slender, bare tree trunks at the front and back. The car faces left, with its headlights on. A blanket lays spread out on the ground beside it.

Blue

By Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson, Conducted by Joseph Young, Directed by Tazewell Thompson. The moving story of ​​a Black middle-class family in Harlem whose hopes and dreams for their teenage son are shattered when he is shot by a white police officer.

A large, white backdrop completely fills the back wall of the stage, composed entirely of several contiguous rows of life-size windows and doors. Shadows around the window and door jambs and thresholds reveal the windows and doors to be three-dimensional. The rows appear stacked on top of the other, tilting up on a slight diagonal from left to right. Over the course of the performance, white light shines out from the glass panes of various doors and windows scene to scene, while the entire wall is bathed in pink, cool lavender, warm orange or yellow, deep, vibrant blue, or stark red. At other times, the wall is completely dark, with shafts of white light streaming across the front of the backdrop from the sides, casting shadows across it’s face.

Jesus Christ Superstar

By Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, Conducted by Tom Deering, Directed by Timothy Sheader. The award-winning London production of the groundbreaking, iconic rock opera that reinvented musical theater for the modern age.

A two-story, exposed-steel-beam structure fills the center of the stage. A full rock and roll band appears on the second floor, surrounded by metal rung ladders and staircases at the sides. Metal-grate ramps angle down to the stage from the bottom of the raised first floor in front. The structure stands amid a verdant grove of trees that extends all the way across the back of the stage.

Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)

By Richard Wagner, Conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, Directed by David Poutney. Over 15 hours, the cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner tell the story of men, maidens, gods, giants, dragons, and dwarves locked in a battle of greed and violence that threaten to destroy the heavens and earth. The operas include:

• Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods)
• Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold)
• Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)
• Siegfried

At the back, the shell of a large foundry building rises 30 feet into the air, spanning the entire 60-foot width of the stage. Massive, 10-inch square, vertical wooden beams at the left and right support a triangular wooden arch overhead. Smaller beams fill in the rafters. Pulleys and ropes appear across the face and sides of the structure itself and on the beams high above the floor.

• Aida
• Ariodante
• l barbiere di Siviglia
• Bel Canto
• Blue
• Carmen
• Carousel
• Cendrillon
• La Cenerentola
• Champion
• Cosi fan tutte
• Das Rheingold
• The Daughter of the Regiment
• Dead Man Walking
• Die Walküre
• Don Carlos
• Don Giovanni
• Elektra
• L’elisir d’amore
• Ernani
• Faust

• Fiddler on the Roof
• Le nozze di Figaro
• Fire Shut Up in my Bones
• Florencia
• Götterdämmerung
• Die Zauberflöte
• Hansel & Gretel
• I Puritani
• Idomeneo
• Il Trovatore
• Jenůfa
• Jesus Christ Superstar
• The King & I
• La bohème
• La Traviata
• Le Comte Ory
• Les Troyens
• Lucia di Lammermoor
• Luisa Miller
• Macbeth
• Madama Butterfly

• Die lustige Witwe
• My Fair Lady
• Nabucco
• Norma
• Eugene Onegin
• Orphée et Eurydice
• Proximity
• Pique Dame
• Don Quichotte
• Rigoletto
• Roméo et Juliette
• Der Rosenkavalier
• Siegfried
• The Factotum
• Der fliegende Holländer
• Tosca
• Turandot
• West Side Story
• Wozzeck
• The Listeners