I loved Lyric Opera’s 30-year-old production of The Magic Flute, with its 18th-century costumes and storybook sets. It’s also a concept that could turn too cute in a hurry, but it doesn’t. While some of the serious and problematic spots in the libretto have been softened, its Enlightenment message of the need for reason, wisdom, and equality is intact, along with Mozart’s enchanting score.
The YouTube video opens with a young woman seated at a vanity table, writing in her diary and waving good-bye to end a FaceTime chat. The soundtrack begins with a brief acoustic-guitar intro, and then a soft, sweet voice floats into the arrangement, slightly sad but still comforting. A good voice to listen to in hard times, or when sheltering in place. Elena HT Par’s song “Melody” is by far her biggest success, with nearly two million YouTube views....
Cherry Glazerr are a rock band. Now, you can go and split that hair a thousand different ways—comparing them to a predictable string of women-fronted groups that were popular in the 90s or acknowledging that their not-so-delicate balance of styles is two parts vintage this and one part modern that, among other critiques. But the only thing that matters is that Cherry Glazerr are a goddamn rock band led by Clementine Creevy, a rising star who’s as likely to balance herself atop a bass drum or kick over a floor monitor onstage as she is to flick forward airy vocal harmonies....
Chicago’s public health commissioner Dr. Alison Arwady talked about the possibility of a “Vax Pass” this week in a press conference: a passport of sorts issued to people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 that would allow the holder access to festivals, concerts, and other upcoming events. Just to be clear, this isn’t actually a real thing yet, but there are a few locals that are offering incentives for those who’ve received their shots—and some of it sounds much better than getting an “I’m vaccinated!...
Time to plan the weekend. Here’s some of what we recommend: 6/10-6/12: Ribfest Chicago, the public barbecue and music festival, takes over five blocks starting at the intersection of Lincoln and Irving Park and Damen, with more than 30 local vendors including PorkChop and Chicago BBQ Company. Fri 5-10 PM, Sat-Sun noon-10 PM
For much of the aughts Ted Leo & the Pharmacists found themselves in the unusual position of being beloved avatars of the indie-rock scene. The group wasn’t as commercially successful as other acts that emerged from this broad milieu, but their sophisticated, punk-driven, oft-political songs had a scrappiness to them that spoke to the genre’s underdog spirit, and had an unexpected crossover appeal. Ted Leo & the Pharmacists’ bold and refined 2010 album, The Brutalist Bricks, which came out on the indie juggernaut Matador, appeared to be a culmination of their artistic expression and commercial growth over the previous decade....
Last month Alexis Thomas of Black Cat Kitchen and Eve Studnicka of Dinner at the Grotto officially joined forces by rebranding their binomial meal delivery service “Funeral Potatoes,” named for the classic midwestern cheesy hash brown casserole. It was a small but significant flag-planting for one of the first of many pandemic chef pivots I covered in the last year. In a time when we couldn’t (and definitely shouldn’t) go out to restaurants, Instagram pop-ups like theirs kept the creative life force of the Chicago restaurant industry alive....
Mono have been making dramatic, orchestral, largely instrumental experimental rock for 20 years, and in that time they’ve played in nearly 60 countries and released ten full-length albums. Their latest, January’s Nowhere Now Here (Temporary Residence), is arguably their best yet. It almost feels like a reunion record: Mono took a break in 2017 after founding drummer Yasunori Takada left the band, their first lineup change since forming in 1999. Mono returned to the stage and studio in August 2018 with new drummer Dahm Majuri Cipolla, and taking a year to find him proved to be a good move....
Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Jennifer Marx, meat photographer. “But chicken, for some reason, is not attractive, and it’s a big pain in the ass to photograph. Raw chicken is so gross. Even I get grossed out by that. I don’t like photographing just a plain cooked chicken breast either, because how do you make that look interesting?...
Joe Raymond/AP Photos Former Notre Dame president Father Theodore Hesburgh It’s been said and repeated a million times: No one on their deathbed wished they’d spent more time in the office. “We knew when he wasn’t going to the office, that was a sign,” Jenkins said.
It was a great weekend for contemporary opera in Chicago. Lyric’s not-to-be-missed Dead Man Walking (here’s our review) continued at the Civic Opera House while across the Loop at the Harris Theater, Chicago Opera Theater presented a two-performance, one-weekend run of the 2014 one-act Everest, with an astounding score by Joby Talbot and a libretto by Gene Scheer that turns the tragic 1996 adventure that was the subject of Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air into an emotionally taut opera....
The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. But the story is also an indictment against the Chicago news media itself, which was, at the time, 90 percent white, Rivlin included; many of those reporters and editors and producers, Rivlin noted, had been inspired to go into journalism by the events of 1968, particularly the convention....
Beloved Sisters One of the city’s biggest film events, the Chicago Latino Film Festival opened last night and continues through Thursday, April 23, with most programs at River East 21. Our roundup of week one is here; check back next week for the sequel. Also in this week’s issue, I take a look at Beloved Sisters, a German drama about the menage a trois between the poet and philospher Friedrich Schiller, his wife, Charlotte von Lengefeld, and her married sister, Caroline....
May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, established by Congress in 1992 in recognition of the nation’s Asians and Pacific Islanders. According to the U.S. Census, as of 2017, 6.1 percent of Chicago’s population was Asian, Native Hawaiian, or other Pacific Islander, making it the city’s fifth-largest demographic. And according to the U. of C.’s Center for Asian Health Equity, as of 2014, 80% of the Asian-Americans in Illinois resided in the Chicago metropolitan area....
“Put a pig on it” could be the motto at Pork & Mindy’s, the Bucktown sandwich shop from the Food Network’s Jeff Mauro, aka the “Sandwich King.” In addition to smoked pork (available in sandwiches, atop tater tots, and as an add-on to the salads), the quick-service spot makes its own candied bacon (aka “Pig Candy”), which is heavily deployed in the previously mentioned sections of the menu, in two of the three milk shakes, and served straight up....
Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the newly independent Reader. Americans will surely recall that during the past year of a heated contest to determine the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, we were repeatedly told by the corporate-backed candidates and by the corporate press that our government has no money to pay for Medicare for All, a program favored by a majority of voters. Yet, in the blink of an eye, Congress and the Federal Reserve have startlingly come up with $4 trillion to bail out such essential industries as cruise ships and casinos....
If your patience with upper-class twits being bailed out by their underlings is thin these days, I understand. But if you’re in desperate need of a midwinter romp and can put class consciousness to the side for a couple of hours, then First Folio Theatre’s world premiere of Jeeves Saves the Day might provide a confectionary respite. Joe Foust’s production takes a little while to find its feet and to lay out the backstory for all the characters....
Oaxacan food isn’t the most well-represented subset of the vast regional Mexican canon that we have in Chicago, but we’ve had it both on the high and low end, from the mole dishes of the peripatetic Geno Bahena to the soft banana-leaf tamales at the Maxwell Street Market. Among the handful of established restaurants that do serve the great food of the mountainous southwestern Mexican state, few go at it full-bore....
