Lyric Opera 2022-2023 Issue 5 - Le Comte Ory

27 | Lyric Opera of Chicago of the 2017 Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe. Hallam competed as a semi nalist in the 2019 Neue Stimmen International Singing Competition and the 2019 Voice of South Africa International Singing Competition. Chicago appearances include two performances for the Harris Theater’s Beyond the Aria series, one alongside Joyce DiDonato. Later in Lyric’s 2022/23 season, Hallam will appear in Proximity . Lunga Eric Hallam is sponsored by Ms.Gay K.Stanek and The Ford,Mages,and Boykins Families. WM. CLAY THOMPSON | SECOND COURTIER Lyric debut The American bass is a rst-year Ryan Opera Center member and a two-time District winner of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition. He recently debuted at Arizona Opera (Zuniga/ Carmen ) and the Metropolitan Opera (Octet Singer/Brett Dean’s Hamlet ). This season at Lyric, he will also be heard in Carmen and Proximity . Thompson is a former participant in the Santa Fe Opera and Wolf Trap Opera young- artist programs. From 2017 to 2019, he was a Resident Artist at Minnesota Opera, performing in operas of Mozart, Verdi, Massenet, Puccini, Jake Heggie, Kevin Puts, and Joel Puckett ( The Fix , a world premiere). Among other companies, Thompson has been featured at the Château de Versailles Spectacles (Suleyman Pasha/ The Ghosts of Versailles ), The Glimmerglass Festival ( The Cunning Little Vixen , Silent Night , West Side Story , Noye’s Fludde , The Ghosts of Versailles , and La traviata ), and Fort Worth Opera (Zuniga/ Carmen and Raymond Buck/David T. Little’s JFK , in a world premiere). Wm. Clay Thompson is sponsored by The J.Thomas Hurvis Endowment. ENRIQUE MAZZOLA | CONDUCTOR Lyric’s Music Director—only the third in the company’s history—is renowned as an expert interpreter and champion of bel canto opera and a specialist in French repertoire and early Verdi. Lyric audiences rst experienced the Italian conductor’s artistry in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in 2016/17, and subsequently in Bellini’s I puritani in 2017/18. During 2019/20, he led Verdi’s Luisa Miller to launch the company’s Early Verdi Series, which continued with Ernani to open the 2022/23 season. Mazzola’s rst opera as Lyric’s Music Director, Verdi’s Macbeth in Sir David McVicar’s new production, opened the 2021/22 season, followed by Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love as well as Verdi Voices and Rising Stars in Concert . Mazzola is Conductor in Residence at the Bregenz Festival and Principal Guest Conductor at Deutsche Oper Berlin, and served as Artistic and Music Director of the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France from 2012 to 2019. Symphonic guest work has included the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse, Philharmonia Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, London Philharmonic, and Brussels Philharmonic. He 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 include Glyndebourne (including DVD releases of Il barbiere di Siviglia and Poliuto ), new productions in 2019 for Bregenz ( Rigoletto ) and Salzburg ( Orphée aux Enfers ), Pesaro (Rossini Opera Festival), Venice, and Aix-en-Provence. Mazzola was born in Barcelona, Spain, into a musical family, and grew up in Milan, where he studied violin and piano, earning diplomas in composition and orchestral conducting at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi of Milan. Enrique Mazzola is supported by the John D.and Alexandra C.Nichols Endowed Chair. BARTLETT SHER | ORIGINAL DIRECTOR Previously at Lyric: Romeo and Juliet (2015/16). Equally successful in theater, opera, and musicals, the celebrated American director, who has been nominated for six Tony Awards, received both the Tony and the Drama Desk Award for the acclaimed Broadway revival of South Paci c (2008). On Broadway, Sher has also directed The Bridges of Madison County , Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown , Golden Boy , The Light in the Piazza , Awake and Sing! , Joe Turner’s Come and Gone , and the recent revivals of The King and I and Fiddler on the Roof . Operatic credits include Faust (Baden-Baden), Nico Muhly’s Two Boys (English National Opera, world premiere), Romeo and Juliet (Salzburg Festival, La Scala), and Mourning Becomes Electra (Seattle Opera, New York City Opera). At the Metropolitan Opera, he has directed The Barber of Seville , Les contes d’Hoffmann , Two Boys (American premiere), Le comte Ory , Otello , and L’elisir d’amore . In 2008, Sher was named resident director at New York’s Lincoln Center Theater. He has served as company director at Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater and as artistic director at Seattle’s Intiman Playhouse, where his productions ranged stylistically from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (2002 Callaway Award) and Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters to Shaw’s Arms and the Man , Bergman’s Nora , Craig Lucas’s The Dying Gaul , and the world premieres of The Light in the Piazza , Joan Holden’s Nickel and Dimed , and Lucas’s The Singing Forest . KATHLEEN SMITH BELCHER | REVIVAL DIRECTOR Previously at Lyric: Doctor Atomic (2007/08) and The Magic Flute (2001/02) . The stage director is currently in her 21st year as a member of the directing staff at the Metropolitan Opera. Highlights for the current season include Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera, and debuting at Paci c Symphony with Rigoletto . Among other companies, she has worked extensively with San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and San Diego Opera. Belcher assisted Peter Sellars on the world premiere of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic in San Francisco and helped to remount the production for the Netherlands Opera (Amsterdam). Last season, Belcher joined Florida Grand Opera and Orlando Opera for Rigoletto , and returned to the Metropolitan