Lyric Opera 2025-2026 Issue 9 - Così fan tutte

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 8 At the midway point of the season, a look ahead at the bold mix of Lyric’s offerings Coming Attractions "I would love for Lyric to be a place where all sorts of creative musical artists can see themselves and their work,” said John Mangum, General Director, President and CEO of Lyric Opera of Chicago. He was speaking in advance of the company’s world premiere of A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness — and the innovative production’s sold-out success seems to indicate that the process is well underway. In this season and beyond, the company is intentionally broadening its offerings. For nearly seven decades, Lyric has been synonymous with the pillars of the operatic repertoire, and that won’t change (take note: the company’s own Ring cycle is on the horizon for 2029). Yet new audiences are finding their way to the opera house as well, for more world premieres, genre- bending collaborations, concerts, and films with live orchestra. It’s intentional. “We have a duty as one of the world’s leading opera companies to further the art form, to develop the art form, to create new work,” he says. “Opera is a much wider net than one might assume. There’s capacity for creative expression in this art form that spans the boundaries — the false boundaries — of different genres.” The world premiere of safronia , onstage at Lyric April 17 and 18, provides a salient example. The evocative new work, commissioned from Chicago’s first Poet Laureate, avery r. young, draws on Black folklore and poetic narrative, and is rich with the musical lineages of gospel, blues, funk, and soul. It’s a deeply personal story that might never have been told were it not for young’s memorable contributions to the company’s pandemic era Twilight: Gods production. There, young’s poetic narration connected scenes and helped reformulate