Opera

Chicago Opera Theater offers us, with this concert, a chance to see two stunning chamber pieces, one composed by Romantic Robert Schumann, the other composed by the more modern, Czech composer Leo Janáček. The only accompaniment is a piano, and the only set is a screen with projections. And they are intimate and beautiful – even when the overall production asks the audience to draw comparisons between the pieces that seem a stretch.

It is clear, with a piece as rich as this, why Carmen has endured. And the Lyric puts on a stellar production, with everything you could ask for: every single performer is impeccable; the musicians and conductor are top-notch; the sets, costumes, and other technical aspects are all magnificent. A very traditional, and very talented, production of one of the great operas, it would be foolhardy to let this one pass by unnoticed.

The music is quintessential Handel: Baroque, ornamental, beautiful. He often riffs on a single textual line for minutes on end, like an Enlightenment-era MC5, which is aurally impressive, but does occasionally leave those on stage looking for ways to act around the repetition. Sellers often gives them actions representing certain lines, which are repeated with them.

The story is in many ways a typical Knight of the Swan tale from the Middle Ages: a mysterious stranger (Lohengrin, in this production excellently portrayed by the South African tenor Johan Botha) appears, on a boat pulled by a swan, to save a troubled damsel (Elsa, the soprano Emily Magee); he then leaves, once a promise is broken, often that of not requesting the name and lineage of the hero