It was Friday, the 13th of March, 2020, when Lyric Opera general director Anthony Freud had to cancel the company’s decade-in-the-making, mega-bucks project—a three-week run of Richard Wagner’s four-opera opus, the Ring Cycle.
Friday the 13th was also the last day that the full Lyric staff worked in the opera house. Freud says he couldn’t have imagined that a year later he’d still be working from home, having weathered the cancellation of the entire next season.
Meanwhile, in just three months, the curtain comes down on fiscal 2021—a full year in which the opera house was shuttered. Freud declines to comment on how painful that’ll be financially, but says they’re regarding it as a “reimagined” season in which they’ve learned “a huge amount,” and have been busy developing virtual programming, available free on the Lyric’s YouTube and Facebook channels. Coming up on video this spring: Lyric’s always terrific Ryan Opera Center showcase, a concert celebrating the tenure of music director Andrew Davis, and a cabaret featuring Broadway classics. What you won’t see there is Met-in-HD-style video of past Lyric opera productions. “The only video we have is a single fixed-camera archive recording, which we do not have the right to use publicly,” Freud says.
Dreamed up and directed by Naperville native Yuval Sharon (and co-commissioned by Michigan Opera Theatre, where Sharon is artistic director), it’ll be staged as a 70-minute “drive thru,” and will feature, in addition to Wagner’s music, poetic narration by Chicago’s avery r. young. At $125 per car, with a total 300-car limit, it’ll be a hot ticket. The plan is to stream it for the rest of us who, at least, won’t have exhaust fumes as a potential issue. Freud says it’s an example of “how COVID has forced us to think of new creative opportunities.”
Also, pack your picnic basket: as announced by Ravinia Festival this week (and barring another Friday the 13th kind of episode), the CSO will have a six-week season there this summer. v
