Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 5 - Blue

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 66 Raising Their Voices (1994-2003) 1994 New World Records releases the LOCAA recording of Six Characters in Search of an Author by Hugo Weisgall. From the mid-90s into the early 2000s, LOCAA enjoys ever- widening performance opportunities — at the Grant Park Music Festival and Chicago Humanities Festival, and with a number of regional orchestras including the Rockford Symphony Orchestra (1998), Lake Forest Symphony (1999), Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (2000), and Northwest Indiana Symphony (2002). 1995 Richard Pearlman, a veteran educator and director who made his Lyric debut with La Bohème in 1982, is named LOCAA Director. He helps launch numerous significant careers, including that of Matthew Polenzani, an Ensemble member from 1995 to 1997. 1996 The comedic performer (and true operaphile) Charles Nelson Reilly conducts a master class. 1997 Between Two Worlds (The Dybbuk), a work by Shulamit Ran, the first woman and Lyric’s fifth composer-in-residence, receives its premiere. 1998 As part of its WTTW Presents series, the local television station broadcasts “The Opera-Philes,” a LOCAA performance at the Ravinia Festival. 2000 In honor of LOCAA’s 25th anniversary, Rising Stars in Concert is performed with full orchestra — a tradition that continues today. Decade 3: Making Some Noise Clockwise from left: The Ensemble takes a bow at a 2001 Grant Park Music Festival concert at the Petrillo Music Shell; Ensemble soprano Kimberly Jones with Samuel Ramey in Boris Godunov (1994/95); the 2002/03 Ensemble; the 1997 Rising Stars in Concert ; actor and comedian (and operaphile) Charles Nelson Reilly leads a 1996 masterclass. In its third decade, artists from the Ryan Opera Center performed all over town — and the city’s airwaves. Opportunities with full orchestra proliferated as well. Here we continue our celebration of the program’s 50th anniversary.