Lyric returns to live performances with a landmark 2021/22 Season. Maestro Enrique Mazzola begins his first season as music director with a thrilling lineup of operas, from fresh takes on beloved classics to brilliant works you’ve never seen before. Audiences will be greeted by a freshly renovated opera house with improved accessibility, brand-new seats, better sight-lines, and increased comfort. Lyric is bringing the music back, and we can't wait for you to join us.
Join us, and be moved and inspired by powerful stories, thrilling theater, and the music you’ve been craving. Subscribers get special benefits along with the best prices of the season, including priority access, event invitations, and more.
September 17 – October 9, 2021
Lyric’s riveting season opener is the inaugural production of Music Director Enrique Mazzola's tenure, and a brand-new production from Sir David McVicar. Adapting one of the greatest tragedies written by his hero, Shakespeare, Verdi created a stunning portrait of the most power-hungry couple who ever trod a stage. Macbeth’s bloody ascent to the throne of Scotland — led and supported by his wife’s own consuming ambition — results in disaster for them both. Verdi brings them to blazing life in a score that bristles with energy and endless excitement. Grand-scale arias, hair-raising duets, stupendous ensembles — they’re all here, in the first genuine masterpiece of Verdi’s career.
September 26 – October 8, 2021
No operatic hero is more endearing than Nemorino, who pines for the flirtatious Adina. She’s the owner of the town’s hotel, he’s her delightfully naive waiter. His only hope to win her is the “elixir” sold by the quack, Dr. Dulcamara — little does he know that it’s just Bordeaux wine! From start to finish we root for Nemorino, as Adina toys with him until she finally lets him know how she really feels. Elixir is opera’s most heartwarming comedy, filled with Donizetti’s delectable music that brings nonstop smiles.
November 3 – 27, 2021
Mozart’s miraculous blend of the human and the supernatural, comedy and romance, draws us into a world where a prince, Tamino, and a princess, Pamina, triumph over every obstacle in their search for wisdom and enlightenment, and are finally united in love. This is a gloriously varied score, with the lovers’ soulful arias, the stratospheric vocal fireworks of the villainous Queen of the Night, the subterranean depths of the formidable high priest Sarastro, and the folk-like melodies of the lovable birdcatcher, Papageno. Lyric brings you a critically acclaimed production that pays homage to the silent movies of the 1920s, praised by The Guardian as “a joyous yet profound staging in which animation takes centre stage…[taking] live video to new heights on the opera stage.”
November 13 – 28, 2021
Lyric’s first Spanish-language work to be presented as part of the mainstage opera season, this story about a glamorous diva on a life-changing adventure on the Amazon is suffused by the entrancing allure of magical realism. Florencia Grimaldi, a renowned diva, is engaged to perform at the opera house of Manaus, Brazil. Traveling there by boat, she’s consumed by longing for her long-lost lover, who she hopes will be awaiting her. Florencia and her fellow passengers are all intensely memorable characters, and they’re illuminated by the magnificent, sumptuous romantic music created by a true musical genius — Mexico’s finest opera composer, Daniel Catán.
March 12 – April 10, 2022
A diva who has all of Rome at her feet. A woman who takes charge of her life and fights for what she wants. A heroine who is brave and loving, extravagantly emotional, yet utterly irresistible. Floria Tosca is all these things. She’s loved by Mario Cavaradossi, the revolutionary, and lusted after by Baron Scarpia, Rome’s vicious police chief. Puccini’s lushly grand-scale music illuminates these characters, and the entire opera bursts with a theatricality that makes Tosca a favorite of audiences everywhere.
March 24 – April 8, 2022
New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow’s widely acclaimed memoir is the source for this extremely moving story of his traumatic youth in Louisiana. What an amazing collection of talent — composer Terence Blanchard, one of the most influential figures in American jazz; librettist Kasi Lemmons, director of such remarkable films as Harriet and Eve’s Bayou; and a topflight cast including many of America’s most brilliant singing actors. Fire Shut Up in My Bones is an opera for today, revealing the Black experience in this country as few other operas have done.
April 1, 2022
Lyric will celebrate Sir Andrew Davis’s magnificent two-decade tenure as music director with one of his favorite works, never previously performed at Lyric: Beethoven’s enthralling, life-enhancing Symphony No. 9, the “Choral,” music’s most exalted hymn to the human spirit. Sir Andrew will conduct a superb vocal quartet with the wonderful Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus. The concert will begin with a new choral work by Sir Andrew’s son, Ed Frazier Davis, an impressively gifted composer.
The American dream: the promise of a better life for those who work to achieve it. In this gripping drama, acclaimed composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek explore whether regular, hardworking people are able to fulfill their destiny — and what happens when fate is cruel, and their dreams turn into nightmares. A haunting, supernatural story of Nebraska homesteaders in the 1870s and their dream of “proving up” and obtaining the deed to the land they’ve settled, the opera draws us vividly into a world where the requirement of a single glass window can shatter the hopes and dreams of a family. The Washington Post called Proving Up “harrowing…powerful…a true opera of our time.”
Lyric Opera of Chicago thanks its Official Airline, American Airlines.
Lyric Opera of Chicago is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
Photos: Cory Weaver/Los Angeles Opera, Kyle Flubacker, Todd Rosenberg, Pittsburgh Opera/c. 2018 David Bachman Photography, Darris Lee Harris Photography