Lyric Opera 2019-2020 Issue 1 Millennium Park Program

6 Welcome to the 2019 Stars of Lyric Opera at Millennium Park concert! We thank Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Cultural Commissioner Mark Kelly for again making the Pritzker Pavilion available for us to share this special experience with the City of Chicago. I’m thrilled that our world-renowned music director, Sir Andrew Davis, is on the podium tonight. He’ll be leading Lyric’s magnificent orchestra and chorus, along with a host of world-renowned stars who will figure prominently in the 2019/20 Lyric season. It’s our custom to highlight the upcoming season in our Millennium Park concerts, and I know you’ll be as excited as I am about the season when you hear tonight’s varied program. We’re featuring the opera that opens the season, Rossini’s effervescent comic masterpiece, The Barber of Seville , along with four other great works that are back at Lyric this season – Verdi’s Luisa Miller , Mozart’s Don Giovanni , Puccini’s Madama Butterfly , and Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades . The season will also include “The Three Queens” – a special program featuring the finales of Donizetti’s three “Tudor Queen” operas. I’m very excited about two American works: the Lyric premiere of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking , an extraordinarily moving work based on the groundbreaking novel by Sister Helen Prejean; and, at The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare, Lyric Unlimited’s production of a brand-new work, intensely relevant to our own time and our own city – Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s Blue . The climax of the operatic portion of the season will be the greatest challenge any opera company can take on: Richard Wagner’s monumental Ring cycle, in its first full presentation in Chicago in 15 years. One of the most exhilarating American musicals, 42 nd Street , will arrive at Lyric in the spring, and special events at the opera house will include a recital by a longtime company favorite, world-renowned Welsh bass-baritone Sir Bryn Terfel. I want to offer Lyric’s deepest thanks to our lead sponsor, closerlook, inc., and our cosponsors: Walter E. Heller Foundation, An Anonymous Donor, Rhoda and Henry Frank Family Foundation, Baker Tilly Virchow Krause LLP, CNA, Crain-Maling Foundation, the Komarek-Hyde-McQueen Foundation/Patricia Hyde, Sipi Metals Corp., the Music Performance Trust Fund, and the Film Funds Trust Funds. Have a wonderful evening at Millennium Park. I hope to see you again throughout the season! Anthony Freud General Director, President & CEO The Women’s Board Endowed Chair FROM THE GENERAL DIRECTOR TODD ROSENBERG