Displaying items by tag: Chicago opera

Chicago Opera Theater (COT) closes its 2025/26 season with the concert premiere of a new opera Trusted - the seventh full-length opera developed through COT’s Vanguard Initiative. Composed by Aaron Israel Levin to a libretto by Marella Martin Koch, Trusted was developed over the course of Levin’s two year tenure as COT’s Vanguard Composer. Earlier this season, audiences were invited to view a piano-vocal workshop of the opera and provide feedback. Now, audiences can see how the piece has developed since the first workshop in its fully orchestrated premiere. Trusted will be presented on Saturday, May 30 at 3:00 p.m. at The Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building, 410 S Michigan Ave. Tickets are $30-$70 and available at chicagooperatheater.org.

Founded in 2018, COT’s Vanguard Initiative is a two-year residency for composers ready to enter the world of opera. Participants are immersed in every aspect of the art form, from repertoire study and vocal writing to administration and production, culminating in a commissioned full-length opera.

“It’s easy to imagine that new operas arrive fully formed from the minds of a composer and librettist. In reality, they are built over time—through collaboration, experimentation, and the opportunity to hear the work come to life at different stages of its development,” explains COT’s General Director Lawrence Edelson. “This past fall, we invited audiences not only to experience an early version of this exciting new work, but to actively engage with it—offering invaluable feedback to Aaron and Marella through Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process. By opening the workshop process to the public, we’re able to bring fresh perspective to the creators while also demystifying how a new opera actually comes into being. The insights we gathered during that first workshop were instrumental as Aaron and Marella continued refining the piece in advance of the upcoming Concert World Premiere.”

About Trusted

Set against the backdrop of a high-stakes financial scandal, Trusted is an intimate exploration of deception, betrayal, and the emotional toll of broken faith. When an accomplished financial advisor is exposed for orchestrating a decades-long fraud, the fallout extends far beyond his clients — it fractures the very foundation of his family. His two daughters struggle to reconcile the man they knew with the crimes he has committed. As the truth unravels, so do their own perceptions of loyalty, morality, and the fragile nature of trust itself. Through a dynamic score by COT’s Vanguard Composer in Residence Aaron Israel Levin, and a taut, contemporary libretto by Marella Martin Koch, the opera delves into the complexities of family bonds, the weight of inherited legacies, and the search for redemption in a world where trust—once lost—may never be regained.

The Concert World Premiere of Trusted will be conducted by Eli Chen. The cast features sopranos Tracy Cantin and Meghan Kasanders, mezzo-soprano Quinn Middleman, and bass-baritone Kyle Albertson. Kate Pitt serves as dramaturg.

About Chicago Opera Theater

Chicago Opera Theater’s mission is to enrich the lives of those who live, work and play in Chicago by bringing rarely produced and contemporary operas to life, supporting gifted emerging artists, and providing hands-on experiences with opera that entertain, empower creativity, and cultivate a lasting and meaningful connection to the arts. Guided by our core values, COT serves Chicago through unique, relevant, and innovative opera experiences that reflect the aspirations of our city — dynamic, inclusive, and forward-thinking — fostering inspiration, dialogue and belonging. Since its founding in 1973, COT has grown from a grassroots community-based company to a national leader in an increasingly vibrant, diverse, and forward-looking art form. COT has staged over 160 operas, including over 90 Chicago premieres and 50 operas by American composers. COT is led by General Director Lawrence Edelson who was appointed in 2023.

For more information on Chicago Opera Theater productions, visit chicagooperatheater.org/

Created in 1904, Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly has become one of the world’s greatest and most popular operas.  New York’s Metropolitan Opera alone had performed it 902 times prior to the beginning of its 2023-24 season.  Renowned for his gifts for melody, Puccini’s musical component is ravishingly beautiful.  His manner of intermixing cultural references into his orchestration also makes it exquisitely complex.  Enhanced with a gripping story about the power of trust and the fragility of love, Madama Butterfly qualifies as an irrefutable masterpiece. Throughout its existence though, the opera has also been an artistic triumph with issues.

An adaptation of a one-act play written in 1900, which itself was based on a short story by an American author, John Luther Long two years earlier, it’s been criticized as being a flawed fantasy.  One created by white men about the essence of another culture.  In this case, Japan.  In Madama Butterfly, an American, Lt. B. F. Pinkerton, arrives in the island country and soon begins a quest for love.  A love that he never plans to be lasting.  Once he returns state side, he’ll re-enter the mainstream and marry traditionally.

Since its origin, issues of perception and portrayal have always haunted Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.  He composed it in partnership with Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica who wrote the text or libretto.  For most of the opera’s existence, the way Japanese culture and its people were projected robbed them of dimension and ultimately diminished their humanity.  In both early productions of the opera and in virtually all that followed, Japanese men saw their virility erased while Japanese women watched their deference be reduced to an exaggerated docility.  As intrinsically lovely Madama Butterfly is as a creative jewel, for the Japanese people and many others of color, it has also been deeply problematic.

For Matthew Ozawa, Director and Chief Artistic Officer of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, it was as well.  As a Japanese-American director of operatic works, his relationship with Puccini’s masterpiece has been fraught.   He knew intrinsically as a director he could never present it in a conventional way.  If he were ever to take on the challenge of staging the piece, he would do it through more enlightened eyes.  The current production of Madama Butterfly he directs at the Lyric, running through April 12^th, shows how spectacular a 122-year-old classic can look and feel with a total makeover by a gifted artisan.

Ozawa’s Madama Butterfly, co-produced by the Cincinnati Opera, Pittsburg Opera, Detroit Opera and the Utah Opera, dismantles the old format and completely rebuilds it in a contemporary context.  The overhaul was so comprehensive, keeping the original orchestration and libretto unaltered and intact was a condition for greenlighting his vision.   

The Company of Madama Butterfly.

Like many men of his generation, Ozawa loved playing video games growing up.  It wasn’t a leap for him to envision Madama Butterfly taking on the features of a machine generated video game offering a portal to an alternate reality.  Pinkerton (tenor Evan LeRoy Johnson) would travel to Japan through his headset and begin a journey that would lead to the devastating consequences we all know will follow.

But first, like any talented leader, Ozawa needed to assemble a team to bring his concept to fruition.  Based on opening night’s performance at the Lyric, a better dream team probably doesn’t exist.  Recruiting all females as his key collaborators, who were either Japanese or Japanese-American, cultural accuracy and agency would no longer be a concern.  Each of them a heavy hitter in her respective craft, the composite experience they created was so remarkable it could easily be considered revelatory.  The superb impact of Kimie Nishikawa’s set designs and Yuki Nakase Link’s lighting talents made on the production’s visual potency and dynamism can’t be overstated. 

A muted background would suddenly blaze in dramatic color and fill with subtly ornate splendor when Pinkerton donned the goggles that would transport him to Japan. There, Maiko Matsushima’s costume designs bowled you away with their texture, imagination, sophistication and beauty.

Even when we first finally meet Cio-Cio-San, Butterfly, played by Karah Son, we’re visited with the unexpected.  She’s as small and delicate as butterflies are, but in her words and carriage you sense the steel in her spine.  At 15, she may have become a geisha to support herself, but she’s clearly proud of the fact that she’s also “well-bred”.   That inner dignity is an ever-present element of her character. 

Son has played this crucial character in houses around the globe; in her native Korea, Warsaw, Berlin, Bologna, Los Angeles and San Francisco just to list a few.  This production marks her Lyric debut.  She knows this part.  From the excellence of her soprano Saturday night, and the flawlessness of her acting abilities, she is this part.   

Johnson, a wonderful tenor who’s also making his debut at the Lyric, makes a compelling Pinkerton.  He doesn’t quite comprehend the import of his words when Sharpless (Zachary Nelson) tells him to “Be Careful, she trusts you”, until it’s too late.  Finally realizing what that trust has cost releases his humanity.  But it can’t stop the payment deception exacts.

In the final scene, where only pathos is expected, this presentation all but blinds you with the complex beauty of real life through the fiction of a story.  Ozawa’s brilliant directing, Son’s gifts as a marvelous actress/vocalist and Puccini’s stunning score converge to cause the soul to quake.  

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly now truly soars.

Madama Butterfly

Through April 12, 2026

Lyric Opera of Chicago

20 N. Wacker Drive

Chicago, IL  60606

For more information and tickets:   https://www.lyricopera.org

Highly Recommended

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com.