'Acis' is mostly aces in City of Chicago's annual free summer opera

Here, with small cuts restored, is my Thursday July 30 Chicago Sun-Times and sun-times.com review of the Tuesday July 28, 2009, opening night performance of the free City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs production of Handel's Acis and Galatea at the Chicago Cultural Center.  Repeats Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 p.m., and one night only, Monday August 3, at Millennium Park

Image by David Lee Csicsko

'Acis'  holds sharp cast, mixed staging in free production

BY ANDREW PATNER

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Eleven years ago, Peter McDowell, a creative young programmer for the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, had the idea of presenting a free summer opera with young performers at the Chicago Cultural Center.  His first venture, a rare production of Francis Poulenc's The Breasts of Tiresias, was a hit in 1999, and the concept became an annual event, largely showcasing lesser-known works and giving talented singers chances to appear in some repertoire standards as well.

After nine years with the city and two as program director for Opera America, McDowell is now a New York-based arts consultant.  But he was in town Tuesday for the opening of the city's 11th annual summer opera, Handel's 1718 English-language pastorale Acis and Galatea, and with the department's Helen Vasey having ably picked up the series' reins, McDowell looked happy.

Chicago Opera Theater gave the last area production of this brief -- by opera standards: one hour and 45 minutes without an intermission-- frolic in 2001.  This version has many parallels: an attractive young cast and a fresh, non-intimidating approach.  The story is your basic boy meets nymph, boy falls in love with nymph, so does a cyclops who kills boy, nymph turns boy into a fountain so he might live again.  Stage director Joanie Schultz set the mythological story in the Cultural Center's earlier incarnation as the central branch of the Chicago Public Library, circa 1950.

Designer Chelsea Warren had some lovely painted drops of book stacks and gave a terrific sense of the cast as a group of librarians and library students re-enacting Ovid's story.  Schultz, though, seemed unsure how to move her cast about and often seemed to take the lyric "Heedless running to thy ruin" as a stage direction.

Chicago soprano Amy Conn created a delightful, even seductive Galatea, letting her hair down as only a librarian in love can and singing clearly, firmly, and beautifully.  Tenor John Zuckerman, a recent arrival in Chicago, was an earnest but never overly serious Acis, and his voice matched Conn's well.  Local tenor Robert Boldin was a stalwart Damon, friend to all.

Lyric Opera regular Wilbur Pauley had the character of the angry one-eyed giant Polyphemus down, but his voice grew woolly as he raged, melted, and burned.  Susan Nelson, Caitlin McKechney, Scott Brunscheen, Brian Hoffman, and Brad Jungwirth comprised the superb and often hilarious chorus, and with the lead couple made the famous "Happy we!" all that it should be.

Music director Francesco Milioto, as ever, was the fine conductor, leading an orchestra of nine from the harpsichord.

Monday night the free production moves to the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park, making it the first opera to be staged at the five-year-old facility.  The opera also repeats at 7:30 Thursday and 3 p.m. Saturday at the Cultural Center.