Lyric Opera 2022-2023 Issue 6 - Hansel and Gretel

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 38 Seeing a show at Lyric makes for a special field trip. Planting a seed You may be surprised to hear that this production of Englebert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel has been seen before. Not only a decade ago, when the show had a successful run at Lyric Opera of Chicago, but also just a few days before the opening, when students from Chicago Public Schools had a chance to enjoy the production’s full dress rehearsal. Those performances have a slightly more casual feel (a good thing, for introducing young people to the art form), but they also offer all the splendor of a regular show—the full orchestra, lush costumes, and, of course, dazzling melodies and singing. “It’s so fun to watch young people walk into the space for the first time,” says Elise LaBarge, Lyric’s Learning Programs Manager—and of course that’s exactly the point. What better place to begin nurturing a lifelong love of opera than in one of its grandest houses? The CPS dress rehearsal program goes back as far as 2012, when Lyric’s Learning and Creative Engagement team was formed. The company had long offered special performances and education opportunities for students across the city, but the past decade has seen tremendous growth and development. There are matinees and other exclusive performances for students, a wide range of streaming options, opera residencies, and the Opera in the Neighborhoods program, which brings youth-focused works to the places where young people and their families live. But perhaps none provide quite so much excitement as an afternoon field trip to see the company in action. Typically, Lyric has offered CPS students access to dress rehearsals throughout the entirety of a season, though the pandemic of course halted this initiative. The logistics of the reboot are daunting and fall mainly into the hands of Anthony Jones, who joined Lyric as a program coordinator in the Lyric Unlimited office, the company’s division of Learning and Creative Engagement, in 2022. With a background in vocal performance and assistant teaching, Jones is no stranger to the world of creative engagement, and he has been enjoying all the challenges of making the dress rehearsal program work. He had Kyle Flubacker Lyric’s Learning and Creative Engagement team has re-launched its popular and influential program that brings students to dress rehearsals.