Lyric 2022-2023 Special-The Brightness of Light

13 | Lyric Opera of Chicago 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. He opened Lyric’s 2022/23 season with Ernani , continuing the company’s Early Verdi Series, and later this season he will be on the podium for Don Carlos and Le Comte Ory . Lyric audiences first 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. Mazzola’s first 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 Principal Guest Conductor at the 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 have included 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. KEVIN PUTS | COMPOSER Winner of numerous prestigious awards, including the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his debut opera, Silent Night , the composer’s works have been commissioned, performed, and recorded by leading ensembles and soloists throughout the world, including Yo-Yo Ma, Jeffrey Kahane, Dame Evelyn Glennie, the New York Philharmonic, the Tonhalle Orchester (Zurich), the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Miro Quartet, and the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, Atlanta, Colorado, Houston, Fort Worth, St. Louis, and Minnesota. His orchestral work, The City , was co-commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in honor of its 100th anniversary and by Carnegie Hall in honor of its 125th anniversary. Silent Night , commissioned and premiered by Minnesota Opera, has been produced at Fort Worth Opera, Cincinnati Opera, the Wexford Opera Festival, Calgary Opera, Montreal Opera, and Lyric Opera of Kansas City, with upcoming productions at Atlanta Opera, Opera San Jose, and Detroit Opera. In 2013, his choral works To Touch The Sky and If I Were A Swan were performed and recorded by Conspirare. His second opera, The Manchurian Candidate , based on the novel and commissioned by Minnesota Opera, had its world premiere in 2015, and his first chamber opera, Elizabeth Cree , commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, premiered in 2017. The Brightness of Light received its premiere in 2019 at Tanglewood Music Center. His fourth opera, The Hour s, received its concert premiere in March 2022 at the Philadelphia Orchestra, and will be staged at the Metropolitan Opera in November 2022. WENDALL K. HARRINGTON | PROJECTION DESIGN Previously at Lyric: A View from the Bridge (1999/2000) Harrington’s career has embraced diverse disciplines including concerts, theater, publishing, and production. Along with more than 35 designs for Broadway, projection designs for opera include Werther at the Metropolitan Opera, The Ghosts of Versailles , Rusalka , Nixon in China , Die tote Stadt , The Girl of the Golden West , Brundibar , The Grapes of Wrath , Morning Star , The Photographer , and Transatlantic as well as sets and projections for Ricky Ian Gordon’s Rappahannock County as well as Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten at LA Opera. For her extensive work in the theater, Harrington is the recipient of the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the American Theatre Wing Award, the TCI Award for Technical Achievement, the Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Projections, the Michael Merritt Award for Collaboration, Ruth Morely Design Award, USITT education award, the Players Club Theatre person of the year, and Lifetime Recognition from the Knights of Illumination. She heads the Projection Design concentration at the Yale School of Drama.