Lyric Opera 2023-2024 Issue 6 - Champion

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 8 Welcome to the Lyric Opera of Chicago! Our 2023/24 Season has been full of exciting performances, but this production is one of the most anticipated events of the year. Less than two years ago, we presented Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones —his second opera—and now we are thrilled to bring you his first, Champion . The planning for this production came when Blanchard was with us in Chicago, during the run of Fire , when the tremendous response from audiences clearly signaled a desire to experience more of his work. He calls Champion “an opera in jazz,” and indeed it is a masterful blending of musical genres. Just as important, the work tells a powerful story about race, sexuality, and self-discovery. This is a show for our times, with a compelling libretto by playwright Michael Cristofer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony awards. On the podium is Lyric’s Music Director, Enrique Mazzola. It has been a season of firsts for our maestro. He opened the season with his first Wagner opera at Lyric, and he will finish the year with his first-ever full production of Verdi’s Aida —also the 100th opera of his lauded international career. In a final “first” of the 2023/24 Season, he will conduct Mozart’s Requiem , his first work by that composer for Lyric audiences. And Champion is Mazzola’s first contemporary work on our stage, an occasion that has him as excited as we are, as you can read about on page 12. Champion is directed by James Robinson and features choreography by Camille A. Brown, the team who brought Fire Shut Up in My Bones to Lyric. The opera’s central character of Emile Griffith is portrayed by three singers: Reginald Smith, Jr. as Older Emile, Justin Austin as Younger Emile, and Naya Rosalie James as Little Emile. Also in the wonderful cast, playing Emile’s mother, is the luminous Whitney Morrison, an alumna of our Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center, and Lyric’s first Artist-in-Residence through Lyric Unlimited, our Learning and Creative Engagement division. We are grateful for the presence of these enormous talents in our opera house, and we are grateful to you, our audience, as well. Your continued generous support makes innovative and important productions like Champion possible. From the Chair and the General Director SYLVIA NEIL Chair ANTHONY FREUD OBE President, General Director & CEO The Women’s Board Endowed Chair Todd Rosenberg Todd Rosenberg