Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 10 - Rising Stars in Concert

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 22 Increasing Opportunities (1984–1994) 1984 Director of the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists (LOCAA), Lee Schaenen (appointed in 1977), is instrumental in launching an innovative Composer-in-Residence program; it bears fruit in the 1985/86 Season with the world premiere of William Neil’s The Guilt of Lillian Sloan , conducted by Schaenen. 1986 LOCAA artists appear in a tripartite musical television ad for McDonald’s, alongside segments with Roger Miller (“King of the Road”) and Gladys Knight and the Pips. Filming takes place on Lyric’s main stage, with Ensemble members holding Big Macs and singing the sandwich’s theme song. 1989 The tradition of Rising Stars concerts begins. 1991 Schaenen retires, and acclaimed bass-baritone Andrew Foldi — a hit as Schigolch in Alban Berg’s Lulu at Lyric in the 1987/88 Season — becomes LOCAA’s Director. 1993 A quartet of “Les jeunes chanteurs du Lyric” performs at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. 1994 Concluding a decade of expanding performance opportunities in venues as varied as Grant Park, Highland Park High School, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the Woodstock Opera House, LOCAA singers perform an all-Mozart program to accompany an exhibition by set designer Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) at the Art Institute of Chicago. Decade 2: Gaining Strength Clockwise, from left: The 1986/87 Ensemble; Ensemble bass-baritone Mark S.Doss as Jago in Ernani (1984); a workshop for The Guilt of Lillian Sloan ; Paul Jacobsen and Patrick Denniston in a student matinee of Così fan tutte (1991); Night of the Rising Stars , 1990; a quartet of LOCAA members took several programs on tour to Paris in 1993; filming a McDonald’s commercial on the main stage,1986. Composers-in-Residence arrive, and performance opportunities expand.