Gathering Note

Notes from the concert hall

Tag: Chicago Opera Theater

  • Hunger, guilt and violence drive a haunting Der Silbersee at Chicago Opera Theater

    Kurt Weill and Georg Kaiser’s Der Silbersee (‘The Silverlake’) has never been an easy work to classify. Somewhere between play, opera, and political fable, this 1933 hybrid resists the tidy categories that make theatrical works digestible. Chicago Opera Theater’s recent production embraces this essential ambiguity and builds its strength from it. Billed as ‘A Winter’s…

  • Chicago Opera Theater rediscovers Salieri’s Falstaff one prank at a time

    Chicago Opera Theater rediscovers Salieri’s Falstaff one prank at a time

    Before Chicago Opera Theater’s recent production of Antonio Salieri’s Falstaff began, the General Director Lawrence Edelson posed a question to the audience in the Windy City’s famed Studebaker Theater: How many people had heard an opera by Antonio Salieri? Fewer than six hands went up. The question was pointedly rhetorical. The Italian-born Viennese composer is…