Best Opera Arias: Turandot, La Traviata, Rigoletto, Cavalleria Rusticana, La Boheme, Aida,

New Head Named at Chicago Symphony Orchestra

The CSO will have a new President, Jeffrey Alexander. Check out the morning drive from WBEZ for details on the story. 

1. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association has picked a new president. Jeff Alexander will start in mid-January. He’s currently president and CEO of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. He’s credited with helping start new programs like a community music school, increasing revenue and ticket sales and re-establishing the orchestra’s domestic and international touring programs. The CSO Association's former president, Deborah F. Rutter, left to lead the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Jeff Alexander joins us to talk about his new job, and what might be in store for the CSO

Check out MacBeth at the Chicago Opera Theater

Here's the details. 

From the moment the curtain rises, this 110-minute non-stop thriller captures the dark and bloody world where ambition and revenge run rampant.  Nmon Ford as Macbeth is “compelling, weak, nervous, delusional in his courageousness. His voice crisp and burnished.” (Opera News).
The 26-year-old Swiss-American composer Bloch wrote this highly dramatic version in 1906. He invests Shakespeare’s original text with an emotional, hair-raising score of tremendous power, “teeming with Richard Strauss flourishes and echoes of Wagner…. a gripping, close-up case for a rare piece that deserves to be heard.” (Los Angeles Times). Experience this long overdue Chicago Premiere.

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Chicago Lyric Opera Hosts Costume Sale

Check out the story from WBEZ. 

Already on the lookout for a Halloween costume? Or possibly your next Comic Con or Renaissance Faire outfit? The Lyric Opera of Chicago has got your back.
This Saturday marks only the second time in Lyric history that the company will be selling some 3,000 pieces of their handmade costume collection to the public. Costume Director Maureen Reilly said the Lyric doesn’t have enough room in their storage for all of the costumes - some dating back almost 100 years.
Some costumes, she said, have even become a bit repetitive.

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Death of a Legend

Here's the story from Opera News.

Magda Olivero, whose career spanned five decades of the twentieth century and established her as an important link between the era of the verismo composers and the modern opera stage, has died. She was 104.

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