Is There A Future For Lyric Opera

Is there a future for grand opera in Chicago?



A contemporary English-language chamber opera, An American Dream (with
music by Jack Perla, libretto by Jessica Murphy Moo), which Lyric will
stage at the Harris Theater in March, will have two performances.



So here’s the hard spot Lyric finds itself in: income from opera ticket
sales is down (part of a national trend, Freud said), while expenses are
growing. What to do? Tamp down spending? Sure, but to maintain the
company’s precious standing as one of the great opera houses of the world,
it can’t be done in any way that’ll reduce the quality of the productions.
The simplest tactic is to continue reducing the number of performances,
since each one represents a financial loss. Ergo: down from 60 this season
(when the budget is $77.5 million) to the previously noted 56 in fiscal
2019.



A major part of those initiatives is Lyric Unlimited, Lyric’s innovative
community engagement program, whose ultimate goal is to ensure a future for
opera by making it relevant to a larger, more diverse audience. This week,
there’s an opportunity to sample its programming: Lyric Unlimited is
presenting Cycles of My Being, a new song cycle about the life of black men in America, by a pair of MacArthur “geniuses,” composer Tyshawn Sorey and
poet Terrance Hayes. It’ll be sung by Brownlee, at the DuSable Museum.   v

Thu 2/22, 7 PM, DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl., 773-947-0600, lyricopera.org, $15.