Picks and pans for the Lyric season

This post contains my opinions about the upcoming Chicago Lyric Opera season. If you have absolutely no interest in opera stop reading now!

I’ve had an orchestra section seats on the aisle season ticket to the Chicago Lyric Opera for more than 25 years. And my wife and I have attended the opera since we were first married. Our seats are visually and acoustically perfect. The first season we saw together was the 1985-1986 season. Over that period we must have seen Tosca, Madama Butterfly, La Traviata, and La Boheme ten times each. I’ll look it up and get the exact tally sometime. Each and every time any one of these works is performed I look forward to it. The music is glorious, the stagings are at least adequate, and these are all operas that it’s actually pretty difficult for a major opera company to mount a really awful production of.

The 2004-2005 season begins in about a month and consists of the following operas:

Don Giovanni
Das Rheingold
Aida
The Cunning Little Vixen
A Wedding
Fidelio
Tosca
Götterdämmerung

The highlight of the season, of course, is the full production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. For those of you who aren’t opera buffs what this means is that all four operas in Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle (Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung) are performed back-to-back over the course of a single week. That’s more than 20 hours of opera. Not only is this a grueling ordeal for the performers, it’s exhausting for the audience as well.

The ability to bring off a complete fullly mounted Ring Cycle is the hallmark of a world-class opera company and that’s what Lyric Opera is, all right, but, although I love Wagner, I don’t love Wagner that much, I don’t have the energy, the time, or the money (it costs extra over and above our regular subscription cost to attend the Ring Cycle) to put myself through it. I guess I’m just a philistine.

Don Giovanni

I love Mozart. But Don Giovanni is my least favorite of all of his operas in the common repertoire. Too opera seria. I’ll attend. I’ll enjoy it. I’m not looking forward to it that much.

Das Rheingold

Das Rheingold does come with the regular subscription. James Morris, the preeminent Wotan of our time, sings Wotan. He alone is worth the price of admission. He actually makes you believe that he is God. The sets, costumes, and staging in Lyric’s Ring are all fabulous. Don’t miss the giant puppets.

Aida

The worst production of Aida I’ve ever seen was at Lyric. Luciano Pavarotti sang Radames. The Chicago Tribune reviewer described him as resembling “the Goodyear blimp in drag”. That pretty much covered it. I suspect that we’ll get another performance of the “smurf” production. Why does Lyric insist on performing this opera without spectacle? Aida is about spectacle. I’ll attend. I’ll enjoy it. I’m not particularly looking forward to it.

The Cunning Little Vixen

I love Janáček’s music and this opera is one of his best. And I’ve never seen it before. Just listened. I am really looking forward to this production.

A Wedding

A new opera based on Robert Altman’s movie. I look forward to this production with great trepidation. The cast is the usual suspects. It’s got everybody except Kyzer Soze. If Catherine Malfitano writhes around on the floor I swear I’m walking out. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Fidelio

They say that every truly great composer has at least one opera in him. Beethoven’s Fidelio is living proof that this is not, in fact, the case. I’ve seen three or four productions of Fidelio over the years. Without exception they’ve been total snores. It’s not the cast’s fault. It’s too long. It’s too ponderous. If it weren’t Beethoven’s only opera, it would have been dropped from the common repertoire a century ago. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Tosca

Is it possible for a major opera company to put on a really bad performance of Tosca? Some of Puccini’s most glorious music, two of his best tenor arias, probably his greatest soprano aria, sex, politics, and murder. What’s not to like? Sam Ramey’s Scarpia will be the icing on the cake. I am really looking forward to this production.

Götterdämmerung

Probably the greatest music in the whole Cycle. Add James Morris and the fact that it’s the part of the Ring we’ve seen the least and I’m definitely looking forward to it.

So that’s my rundown: four definite picks, two maybes, two on which I’ve got my fingers croseed.