Lyric Opera 2021-2022 Issue 2 The Elixir of Love

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 26 DENIS VÉLEZ | GIANNETTA Previously at Lyric: Third Apparition/ Macbeth (2021/22). The soprano, a second-year Ryan Opera Center member from Puebla, Mexico, will be heard later this season as Papagena/ The Magic Flute . She was a national winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2020 Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition. In Mexico’s most important platform for rising talent, the National Singing Contest Carlo Morelli, her performance earned her the First Prize, the French Opera award, and the Francisco Araiza Special award. Her repertoire includes the Countess and Susanna/ The Marriage of Figaro , Bastienne/ Bastien und Bastienne , Fiordiligi/ Così fan tutte , Adina/ The Elixir of Love , and Mimì/ La bohème . Last spring she sang in the Harris Theater’s Beyond the Aria series alongside Joyce DiDonato, and appeared in Lyric’s 2020/21 virtual programs “Pasión Latina,” “Sole e Amore,” “Magical Music Around the World,” and “Rising Stars in Concert.” Denis Vélez is sponsored by the C.G.Pinnell Family. ENRIQUE MAZZOLA | CONDUCTOR Previously at Lyric: Four operas since 2016/17, most recently Macbeth (2021/22); Luisa Miller (2019/20). The Italian conductor, Lyric’s Music Director, is renowned as an expert interpreter and champion of bel canto opera and a specialist in French repertoire and early Verdi. He is Principal Guest Conductor at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and served as Artistic and Music Director of the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France (2012–2019). During the 2020/21 season, Mazzola appeared in Lyric’s virtual programs “Sole e Amore,” “The Sonata Sessions,” “ Attila : Highlights in Concert,” and “ Attila : Breaking Down the Score,” and returned to London in March for much- acclaimed concerts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Symphonic guest work has also included the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Philharmonia Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, London Philharmonic, and Brussels Philharmonic. Mazzola has conducted bel canto works for the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and the major houses of Florence, Strasbourg, Berlin, Zurich, Moscow, and Tokyo, in addition to a historic Meyerbeer cycle for Deutsche Oper Berlin. Past major European festivals have included Glyndebourne (including DVD releases of The Barber of Seville and Poliuto ), new productions in 2019 for Bregenz ( Rigoletto ) and Salzburg ( Orphée aux Enfers ), Pesaro (Rossini Opera Festival), Venice, and Aix-en-Provence. Enrique Mazzola is the John D.and Alexandra C.Nichols Music Director Endowed Chair. DANIEL SLATER | DIRECTOR Lyric debut Among the acclaimed director’s opera productions are Belshazzar (The Grange Festival); Peter Grimes (Opera Queensland); Fidelio , Peter Grimes (London Philharmonic Orchestra at London’s Royal Festival Hall); Tannhäuser (Estonia Opera); Nabucco (Vlaamse Opera); Lohengrin (San Francisco, Houston, Geneva); Aida , Eugene Onegin (Opera Holland Park); La traviata (Houston Grand Opera); Salome , Wozzeck (Santa Fe); Peter Grimes (Geneva); Xerxes (Stockholm); L’arbore di Diana (Valencia); Proko ev’s Betrothal in a Monastery (Glyndebourne, Valencia); Manon Lescaut (Opera North, Oslo, Oviedo); The Elixir of Love (Opera North, Welsh National Opera, New Zealand Festival, Pittsburgh Opera); The Cunning Little Vixen (Bregenz, San Francisco, Geneva); and The Barber of Seville and Der Vogelhändler (Berlin). For Garsington Opera he has directed seven diverse works, among them The Cunning Little Vixen , La gazza ladra , and A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Theater work includes The Lifespan of a Fact , Romeo and Juliet (Singapore Repertory Theatre), Making Waves (Scarborough), Confusions (Salisbury), Grab the Dog (National Theatre Studio) and The Mar k (Soho Theatre). ROBERT INNES HOPKINS | DESIGNER Previously at Lyric: Five productions since 2005/06, most recently Siegfried (2018/19), Die Walküre (2017/18). The British designer’s work has recently been seen at the Deutsche Oper Berlin ( Cavalleria rusticana / Pagliacci ), St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre ( The Enchantress ), and Welsh National Opera ( Rigoletto , the production he designed for his Lyric debut in 2005/06). Highlighting the 2018/19 season were productions of The Lady in the Van (Theatre Royal, Bath); Julius Caesar (Royal Shakespeare Company); and Proko ev’s War and Peace (Welsh National Opera), the latter a partnership with director Sir David Pountney. Among Hopkins’s many previous collaborations with Pountney have been Prince Igor (Zurich Opera House), Carmen (Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre), and Iain Bell’s In Parenthesis (Welsh National Opera, world premiere). Hopkins’s designs have earned acclaim at many other major companies internationally, among them San Francisco Opera, Venice’s Teatro La Fenice, Santa Fe Opera, Den Jyske Opera (Aarhus, Denmark), the Ruhrtriennale (Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten , winner of the highly prestigious Opernwelt Award), the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Chichester Festival, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, among other companies.