Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 5 - Blue

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 72 What is your role here at Lyric? Music librarians research and prepare all of the musical materials that are used by all of the performers in whatever production you’re doing. For the research component, starting multiple years out, you’re figuring out: How are we actually going to make this happen? What are the needs of the orchestra, of the conductor, of the chorus, of the principal singers, of the stage managers? And then you’re also actually preparing the materials — putting in the bowings for the string players, musical markings, cuts, and so on. What was your path to working at Lyric? I played snare drum for five years on the University of Washington drumline — I played in every stadium in what was then the Pac-10 — while majoring in Viola Performance and Music Education. I then decided to get my Master’s Degree in Viola at the University of North Texas, and started playing professionally in the Dallas/ Ft. Worth area. I played a lot with Dallas Opera, as a sub, and that was my favorite place to play. I started doing some library work there and at Dallas Symphony, and I had amazing mentors at both places. Library work combines all of the practical skills I had from being a performer with a bunch of other interesting disciplines. And eventually I got it in my head that I wanted to switch careers entirely and be an opera librarian. What is something about your job that would surprise people? There’s not a degree in our kind of librarianship — it’s almost nothing like being an academic librarian. You have to learn how to do the work under the guidance of really skilled people — almost like a medieval apprenticeship. All librarians are highly experienced orchestral musicians who have then gained other experience in the library field. You can’t just skip that first part. What is the most fun about your role at Lyric? I come from an orchestra background, and I really know that world. But working with our music staff — conductors, pianists, prompters, and others — their breadth and depth of opera knowledge is just beyond anything you can possibly imagine. There’s always something new to learn about the world of singing, like why pianists like a particular piano reduction, or some performance tradition that everyone knows about but isn’t written down. That’s my favorite part of the job. What is the most challenging aspect of your job? Every minute of rehearsal for an opera is unbelievably expensive. You can’t have the rehearsal come to a crashing halt for 10 minutes because the oboe player is missing eight bars of music. On the best day, my job is to think of all of the things these performers need and solve all of the problems before they encounter them. A favorite moment at Lyric? My first production here — Twilight: Gods, our pandemic-era drive- through Götterdämmerung. I’d imagined being an opera librarian someday, and then I was physically, finally here in Chicago, and then I was adventuring around in the dark with a flashlight in a freezing underground parking garage, meeting our CEO for the first time while wearing a parka and a mask. It wasn’t something I could have possibly imagined, but it’s a great Lyric memory. People of Lyric A behind-the-scenes conversation Hometown: Seattle When did you start at Lyric? September 2020 First opera you saw live? I was dragged to Elixir of Love as a child. Favorite opera? Honestly, Bohème is my favorite opera. I know it’s everyone’s favorite opera. I’m a Puccini-Strauss- Mahler person. Favorite opera character? In Jake Heggie’s Great Scott , there’s a character named Roane, a stage manager, who was sung by Anthony Roth Costanzo in the world premiere. I played in that production, and I loved seeing someone in a behind-the-scenes role portrayed on stage as a complex character. Other passions? Baking fruit-based desserts for friends. Annika Donnen Managing Librarian Kyle Flubacker