Emily Fons (left) sings with Renée Fleming at Saturday’s Millennium Park concert. | DAN REST~LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO
Chicago Sun-Times, Sunday September 11, 2011 7:32 PM CDT
Lyric’s tantalizing taste
Opera stars and newcomers under the moon at Millennium Park
Concert heralds a promising season
BY ANDREW PATNER
Saturday night’s edition of the now annual “Stars of Lyric Opera at Millennium Park” concert at the Pritzker Pavilion had a lot to pull together and did so with great success and, dare we say it, passion.
Chicago’s grand opera company was unrolling its new marketing campaign, “Long Live Passion,” complete with banners, tote bags, and the troupe’s name in lights atop at least one Michigan Avenue skyscraper. The free concert serves as a preview of a new season and its artists, and jam-packed seating and Great Lawn areas apparently held 16,000 folk including hundreds of standees along the concrete pathways.
The waxing moon, to hit full, harvest status Monday, illuminated the focused crowd also witnessing new general director-designate Anthony Freud’s first public role; he was poised, polished, and welcoming in his remarks. Young singers from Lyric’s Ryan Center program took the stage along with internationally known performers and some new, lesser-known guests who showed impressive mettle.
The event also served as a citywide commemoration of the September11 anniversary, and the clear prominence of superstar soprano Renée Fleming in her new role as Lyric’s creative consultant was harnessed for that function as well. Fleming, who reminded the crowd that she had been in Chicago 10 years ago to the day (rehearsing the new production of Verdi’s Otello that opened the 2001 Lyric season), sang a well-modulated (but kitschily orchestrated) “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel as a tribute and as musical launch to the two-hour program.
Fleming was back for a rather over-milked “O mio babbino caro” from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi but was much more genuinely appealing in the late sub of the Barcarolle from Offenbach’s season-opening (October 1) Tales of Hoffmann with superb mezzo Emily Fons (her nuanced performance of Nicklausse’s romance from the Offenbach was an evening highlight). And Fleming closed the program with a not over-giddy “Jewel Song” from Gounod’s Faust.
Fons and recent multiple-competition winner tenor RenéBarbera -- wholly assured both in his signature high C’s-parading “Ah, mes amis” from Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment and his side of the duet from the same composer’s Lucia di Lammermoor -- were the two current Ryan Center reps.
Soprano Susanna Phillips, an alum who will take the title role in Lucia here this fall, delivered a jolly “Je veux vivre” from Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet.Another Ryan alum, tenor Matthew Polenzani (prepping now for his own title turn in Hoffmann), though down with a cold, delivered a stirring final act aria from Massenet’s Werther.
Hoffmann's French conductor Emmanuel Villaume showed his special ability to shift gears rapidly from style to style with the fine Lyric Orchestra.
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