Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 5 - Blue

71 | Lyric Opera of Chicago Students are welcomed at selected productions’ final dress rehearsal, thus experiencing a fully orchestrated and staged performance. This year, dress rehearsals for middle and high schoolers (grades 6-12) include The Marriage of Figaro and La Bohème . Rehearsals reserved solely for high schoolers (grades 9-12), due to their mature content and themes, include Rigoletto , Fidelio , and Blue . Beyond introducing students to a new art form, viewing these operas starts conversations with students. They can explore love and loss in La Bohème , revenge in Rigoletto , grief in Blue , and much more. The arts, and especially opera, open up possibilities and avenues for students to navigate their lives. Everyone deserves the chance to see a performance. Lyric Unlimited is dedicated to equitable access to the program, hoping to improve and expand education and community initiatives that connect the city. A major aspect of this intention is the availability of bus scholarships for certain qualifying schools. In the 2023/24 Season, 1,403 students from 32 schools participated, many benefitting from the 38 roundtrip bus trips Lyric facilitated. Beyond that beautiful moment after Champion outside the Lyric Opera House doors, LaBarge shares that one of the best parts of the program is seeing students’ faces as they walk into the building and witness its magnificence for the first time. “It’s grand,” she says. “There’s no other way to describe it.” One of the best things about the dress rehearsals program, she says, derives from the scale of the art form itself. Students have the opportunity to connect with the powerful vocal performances, the exciting technical lighting, sound, sets, and the engaging storylines. With Lyric Unlimited’s program helping promote access, students are more able than ever to discover what interests them. New this year, the program will include “Behind the Curtain,” a free program where a professional Lyric Unlimited teaching artist will visit the classrooms who plan on attending a dress rehearsal. These sessions include an engaging 45-minute introduction to the show, the opera-going experience, the musical highlights, and the production elements. Following their visit to the opera, teachers will also receive reflection questions for their students so they may extend the learning experience. Because “Behind the Curtain” provides an extended experience of opera beyond the performance, the program prepares students to walk into the Lyric Opera House and feel comfortable and welcomed. “Behind the Curtain” minimizes any confusing aspects of attending opera for the first time and maximizes the potential for students to enjoy, understand, process, and discuss opera at a deeper level. As students from CPS and Big Shoulders schools take their seats in the opera house this season, they are not just spectators, but active participants in a vibrant cultural dialogue — becoming part of a legacy of artistic excellence and enrichment. They gather tools with which to question, create, and aspire. With each performance of the timeless stories and universal emotions that opera conveys, students are invited to dream of a new tomorrow. Seeing a live performance can create a lifelong love of the art form. Robert Kusel