Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 8 - The Listeners

33 | Lyric Opera of Chicago Francesca Harper, Jae Man Joo, Tina Bush, Gabrielle Lamb, and Chuck Wilt. Her professional career highlights include performances with the Metropolitan Opera, PARA.MAR Dance Theatre, House of DOV, Ballare Carmel, and South Chicago Dance Theatre. At Lyric, she appeared also in Carmen and West Side Story , both in the 2022/23 Season. ENRIQUE MAZZOLA CONDUCTOR Lyric’s music director — only the third in the company’s history — is renowned as an expert interpreter andchampion of bel canto opera and Verdi repertoire, and as a specialist in French repertoire. The Italian conductor made his Lyric debut with Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in 2016/17. Mazzola is Principal Guest Conductor at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and, from 2022 to 2024, served as the first ever Conductor-in-Residence at the Bregenz Festival. He served as Artistic and Music Director of the Orchestre national d’Ile de France from 2012 to 2019. Symphonic guest work has included the London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, Orchestre National de France, and Oslo Philharmonic. He has conducted at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, and the major houses of Florence, Berlin, Zurich, Moscow, and Tokyo, in addition to a historic Meyerbeer cycle for Deutsche Oper Berlin. Past major European festivals have included Glyndebourne (including DVD releases of Il barbiere di Siviglia , Poliuto , and Don Pasquale ), new productions in 2019 for Bregenz ( Rigoletto and Madama Butterfly ) and Salzburg ( Orphée aux Enfers ), Pesaro (Rossini Opera Festival), Venice, and Aix- en-Provence. Mazzola was born in Barcelona, Spain, into a musical family, and grew up in Milan, where he studied violin and piano, earning diplomas in composition and orchestral conducting at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan. Enrique Mazzola is supported by the John D.and Alexandra C.Nichols Endowed Chair. LILEANA BLAIN-CRUZ ORIGINAL DIRECTOR Lyric debut Blain-Cruz is currently the resident director of Lincoln Center Theater. The recipient of the Drama League’s 2022 Founders Award for Excellence in Directing, she was also named a 2021 Doris Duke Artist, a 2020 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist, and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow. Recent projects include: El Niño (Metropolitan Opera); The Skin of Our Teeth (Tony nomination); The Blood Quilt , Flex , and Pipeline (Lincoln Center Theater); Marys Seacole (Obie Award, LCT3); Stranger Love (LA Philharmonic); Create Dangerousl y (Miami New Drama); White Girl in Danger (Vineyard/ Second Stage); The Listeners (Norwegian Opera & Ballet/Opera Philadelphia); Dreaming Zenzile (NYTW/National Black Theatre); Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding’s …( Iphigenia ) (MASS MoCA / The Kennedy Center); Hansel and Gretel (a film for Houston Grand Opera); Anatomy of a Suicide (Atlantic Theater Company); Fefu and Her Friends (TFANA); War (LCT 3/Yale Rep); Girls (Yale Repertory); Faust (Opera Omaha); The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (Obie Award) and Fabulation (Signature Theatre); Thunderbodies and Revolt . She Said. Revolt Again . (Soho Rep); The House That Will Not Stand and Red Speedo (New York Theatre Workshop); Water by the Spoonful (Mark Taper Forum/CTG); Henry IV, Part One and Much Ado About Nothing (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); The Bluest Eye (The Guthrie). Upcoming: Purple Rain . MIKHAELA MAHONY REVIVAL DIRECTOR Lyric debut The Brooklyn-based director has developed work with the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Boston Lyric Opera, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Syndicate, City Lyric Opera, The Lobbyists, The Juilliard School, the Chautauqua Institution, Bard College, New York City Opera, and Columbia University. She served as Associate Director for the U.S. premiere of The Listeners at Opera Philadelphia. Summer , Mahony’s debut as a film director, was an official selection at the Buffalo International Film Festival, Flathead Lake International Cinemafest, and FilmColumbia. She is the Director of Opera at Rutgers University, and serves on the faculty of Mannes School of Music at The New School. A volunteer artist with The 52nd Street Project, Mahony is also a frequent collaborator with the Obie-Award winning EST/Youngblood, and a director with the WP Lab 2024-2026. Directing credits include Redwood (Ensemble Studio Theatre, nominated for 3 Audelco Awards including Best Play), Hippolytus (Fisher Center at Bard College), Macbeth (Double Feature), Dear Erich (New York City Opera), Dido of Idaho (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Miss Mitchell (Little Island), The Medium (City Lyric Opera), and Rigoletto (Chautauqua). ADAM RIGG SET DESIGNER Lyric debut Among the set designer’s numerous Broadway credits are The Skin of Our Teeth (Tony Award nomination, Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama Desk Award) and Illinoise (also at Park Avenue Armory). Rigg’s Off-Broadway credits include Teeth (New World Stages/Playwrights Horizons); Blood Quilt (Lincoln Center Theater); On Sugarland (Lucille Lortel Award) and The House That Will Not Stand (NYTW); White Girl In Danger (Second Stage/The Vineyard); Cullud Wattah (The Public); Fefu and Her Friends (Special Citation, Henry Hewes Design Award; TFANA); Soft , Which Way to the Stage? (MCC); Is God Is , and Revolt . She Said. Revolt Again. (Soho Rep); Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (Signature); Continuity, Actually (MTC); and Blue Ridge (Atlantic). Opera work includes El Niño (Metropolitan Opera); The Lord of Cries (Santa Fe Opera); Breaking the Waves (Opera Philadelphia); Giustino (Theater an der Wien); and Prism (LA Opera). Upcoming projects: Nacht ohne Morgen (Staatsoper Berlin/Paris Opéra Comique), Lincoln in the Bardo (Metropolitan Opera), and BOWL EP (Vineyard Theatre/National Black Theater/New Group). c i of b l c t - - r