Here is the full version -- including links -- of my Thursday March 25, 2010, Chicago Sun-Times article on the 2011 season announcement by Chicago Opera Theater.
Artists's conception for Tod Machover's new cyber-opera, Death and the Powers.
Chicago Opera Theater schedule
2011 LINEUP | Local premières and a brilliant programming swap
On the eve of its April-May 2010 season of unusual works by Rossini, Cavalli, and Jake Heggie, Chicago Opera Theater is announcing its 2011 season, including local premières both old and new and a rather brilliant programing swap that will save the company “a great deal of money” while unveiling two additional intriguing works for Chicago audiences next spring.
• COT will open its season April 2 to 10, 2011, with the Midwest première of a new opera by electronic and computer music pioneer Tod Machover of the MIT Media Lab, Death and the Powers (above).
COT has been involved for years in the development of this work which features a libretto by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky and staging by Diane Paulus, director of the Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of the musical Hair, whose early work with COT boosted her profile tremendously. The experimental co-production will have its world première this September in Monaco and will run at Harvard's American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), in Cambridge, Mass., where Paulus is artistic director, before traveling to Chicago. Gil Rose, of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, makes his COT conducting debut. Alex McDowell whose work has been seen in such films as Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the designer.
Powers is based on a story by Paulus’s husband, Randy Weiner, which features a protagonist who literally downloads himself. COT promises "a chorus of robots and a musical chandelier." The production and its development have been supported by Opera Futurum in Monaco.
• The company then continues its three-season survey of Baroque retellings of the Medea story April 23 to May 1, 2011, with the very belated Chicago première of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s 1693 Medée, remarkably the first production by a Chicago company of a Charpentier opera. Brit Christian Curnyn, who makes his company debut next month with the first COT Medea installment, Giasone (“Jason”) by Francesco Cavalli, conducts and Australian Justin Way, whose 2006 Abduction from the Seraglio was a COT highlight, directs. In an intriguing development, Chicago’s Baroque Band will be the orchestra for Medée. Another Baroque rarity, Handel's Teseo ("Theseus"), rounds out the trilogy in 2012.
• The previously announced production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s musical comedy piece Moscow, Cheryomushki ("Moscow, Cherry Tree Towers") which won COT’s annual "People’s Opera" poll and fundraising scheme last year was to round out the 2011 season. Instead it is being pushed to the autumn of 2011 where, with COT resident conductor Alexander Platt in the pit, it will open the 2011-12 season and still fall within the city-wide "Soviet Experience" festival spearheaded by the University of Chicago Presents, according to COT general director Brian Dickie.
• The third spring slot May 7 to 13, 2011, will be taken by an ingenious pairing of two rarely-presented dramatic song cycles of obsession -- Janáček's Czech The Diary of One Who Disappeared (Zápisník zmizelého) with popular tenor Joseph Kaiser, and Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben (“A Woman’s Life and Love”) with a mezzo to be announced later -- under the heading HE/SHE. Collaborative pianist Craig Terry will play for both works directed by veteran Lillian Groag and designed by Peter Harrison whose design for the 2005 Death in Venice was a major COT hit.
In addition to its moving the Shostakovich to the next season (which Dickie said could save about $400,000), COT will also conserve cash this season by not having to contract full freelance orchestras for three productions.
All COT performances are at the Harris Theater. Subscriptions range from $76 to $310; single tickets go on sale in 2011. Phone: (312) 704-8414, or online at www.chicagooperatheater.org.
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