Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 2 - Fidelio

31 | 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 Verdi repertoire, and as a specialist in French repertoire. 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 to launch the company’s Early Verdi Series. Mazzola’s first opera as Lyric’s music director, Sir David McVicar’s new production of Verdi’s Macbeth , 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, since 2022, the first ever Conductor-in-Residence at the Bregenz Festival. He served as Artistic and Music Director of the Orchestre National d’Île de France from 2012 to 2019. Symphonic guest work has included the London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, Orchestre National de France, and Oslo Philharmonic. He has conducted at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and the major houses of Florence, 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, Poliuto, and Don Pasquale ), new productions in 2019 for Bregenz ( Rigoletto and Madama Butterfly ) 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 in Milan. Enrique Mazzola is supported by the John D.and Alexandra C.Nichols Endowed Chair. MATTHEW OZAWA DIRECTOR Previously at Lyric: Five operas since 2015/16, most recently The Three Queens (2019/20) and An American Dream (2018/19). A multidisciplinary stage director, artistic director, and educator, Ozawa became Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Chief Artistic Administration officer, a new position, in 2022. This production of Fidelio was originally commissioned by San Francisco Opera, where he has also directed Orpheus and Eurydice and The Barber of Seville: Drive-In Opera . Recent directorial highlights include an innovative new production of Madame Butterfly , which premiered at Cincinnati Opera in 2023. The opera, with a largely Asian and Asian-American creative team, subsequently received critical acclaim at Detroit Opera and will appear at Pittsburgh Opera and Utah Opera in 2025. Committed to new and modern work, his recent production highlights include Ruo’s Angel Island (Brooklyn Academy of Music / Beth Morrison Projects) and Ruo/Hwang’s An American Soldier (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis). Ozawa’s productions have also been seen at Canadian Opera Company, Santa Fe Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Minnesota Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Opera Colorado, San Diego Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Arizona Opera, Kentucky Opera, North Carolina Opera, Opera Siam, Asia Society, Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center, among many others. Ozawa previously served as Interim Director of Lyric Unlimited, the Learning and Civic Engagement division at Lyric, and spent three years as an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Michigan, School of Music, Theatre & Dance. He was the Founder and Artistic Director of Mozawa, a Chicago-based incubator advancing collaborative art and artists. Raised in California and Singapore, Ozawa is a graduate of United World College of South East Asia and Oberlin Conservatory. ALEXANDER V. NICHOLS SET & PROJECTION DESIGNER Lyric debut Nichols’s design work has been presented on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in opera houses, concert halls, theaters, warehouses, and vacant lots throughout the world. Recent projects include scenic and projection design for Orpheus and Eurydice at San Francisco Opera, scenic and projection design for The Headlands at American Conservatory Theater, production design for Yuri Possokhov’s Swan Lake at Hong Kong Ballet, and lighting design for Christopher Wheeldon’s Finale Finale at San Francisco Ballet. Upcoming projects include the new musical Prison Dancer , Ariel Stachel’s play Out of Character , John Leguizamo’s musical Kiss My Aztec! , and All That We Are by Les 7 doigts de la main. Nichols is a recipient of a San Francisco Certificate of Honor for his work at American Conservatory Theater. He has also received four Isadora Duncan Awards, four Bay Area Critics Circle Awards and three Dean Goodman Awards as well as two nominations each for Henry Hewes Design Awards and Los Angeles Ovation Awards. JESSICA JAHN COSTUME DESIGNER Previously at Lyric: Four operas since 2014/15, most recently West Side Story (2022/23 and 2018/19). Jahn has collaborated with directors Francesca Zambello, Diane Paulus, Tina Landau, Tommy Kail, Jessica Blank, and Kenny Leon; writers Nora Ephron, Eisa Davis, Charles Busch, Charles Fuller, Tracy K. Smith, and Mark Campbell; and some of her past projects include Gloria: A Life (Daryl Roth Theatre), Coal Country (The Public Theatre), Blue (Glimmerglass Festival), Orpheus and Eurydice (San Francisco Opera), Monodramas (New York City Opera), The Crucible (Glimmerglass Festival), The Manchurian Candidate (Minnesota Opera, world premiere), Dead Man Walking (Washington National Opera), and Moby Dick (Utah Opera). She has taught at both NYU and Rutgers University, and is an Adjunct Costume Design Professor with Brandeis University’s Theater Arts Department. She is currently working toward her Master’s in Cultural Anthropology at Hunter College. Costume Designers are supported by the Richard P.and Susan Kiphart Costume Designer endowment. 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