6 (+1) Fascinating Premieres You Never Knew Happened in Chicago

The thought of Chicago as a place for the fine arts was once difficult to imagine. A small trade hub planted by the banks of Lake Michigan, its proximity to waterways and intersections of the nation’s railroads led to rapid growth both in industry and population. But no matter how quickly it grew, it seemed to garner the same scorn. Chicago just wasn’t taken seriously; it couldn’t shake a reputation as a second-rate town.

Everything changed with the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. The town that many brushed aside transformed into a cultural and architectural hub, putting Chicago on the map for scores of domestic and international visitors alike. Perhaps the fact that Chicago was different from New York was not a source of shame, but rather a source of pride: proof that the city fostered rich cultures, innovations, and artistic movements of its own.

For more than a century, artists from all over the world have chosen to give their first performances in the Second City. Yet at no other time in history have these premieres been so prolific as they are today. We are currently living through a golden age of new music premieres in Chicago: it will be interesting to see which ones stand the test of time.

For now, here are just a few high-profile premieres from the past you may not know Chicago hosted!

1. June 8, 1893: International Visitors, International Music at World’s Fair

Vojtěch Hlaváč was a man in high demand. Near the turn of the 20th century, the organist, composer, and professor of music at St. Petersburg’s Imperial University was touring the world. Apart from the musical knowledge that he brought to concerts, he also brought along one of his inventions: a new type of concert harmonium whose capabilities he showed off to intrigued audiences. It was a unique selling point that booked him many performances near the turn of the 20th century… including a few concert series at the World’s Fair of 1893.

At the fair, though, he also performed as a conductor. Between June 5 and August 12, 1893, Hlaváč led the upstart Chicago Orchestra (founded in 1891, it would later be renamed the Chicago Symphony Orchestra). Over the course of the fair, the orchestra performed in a variety of themed programs, including a Russian music night on June 8. The goal of this concert, like many of the World’s Fair Concerts, was to introduce international audiences to contemporary popular music of different cultures.

Hlaváč had his ear to the ground as far as Russian music was concerned; it was useful for his work with students at the conservatory. Hlaváč knew that the new Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov re-orchestration of Night on Bald Mountain — a work that never reached acclaim during Modest Mussorgsky’s lifetime — was making the rounds in Russia to spectacular acclaim. So, as the closing number of the CSO concert on June 8, 1893, Hlaváč chose to introduce Chicago (and American) audiences to Night on Bald Mountain for the very first time.

We don’t know how the audience reacted to that first performance of the spine-chilling masterpiece. However, given the Rimsky-Korsakov version’s enduring popularity within concert programs and media all over the world, it’s safe to say Night on Bald Mountain endured the test of time!

2. December 1921: One Month, Two Prokofiev Debuts

By the time Sergei Prokofiev was finishing up work on his third piano concerto, he was already knee-deep in commissions for various American sponsors. The 30-year-old composer was profiting off of a stroke of luck. A chance 1917 meeting with Chicago businessman Cyrus McCormick Jr. led to the mailing of one of Prokofiev’s scores to McCormick’s friend — a man called Frederick Stock, who just so happened to be the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (the orchestra was renamed to its current title in 1913).

Intrigued by the young Russian, Stock invited Prokofiev to come perform his own Piano Concerto No. 1 with the CSO in 1918. The concert was a rousing success: Prokofiev received a standing ovation, press praise, and a commission to write a new opera, which would premiere at the Auditorium Theatre.

Prokofiev spent three years preparing his next musical premieres. At Symphony Center, he was the soloist in the debut performance of his Piano Concerto No. 3 on December 16, 1921, to modest praise. Later that month, on December 30, Prokofiev conducted the first performance of his highly anticipated opera, The Love for Three Oranges. The Auditorium Theatre premiere was met with fairly mixed reviews. While Prokofiev’s French-language libretto itself was generally applauded, many American critics bemoaned the difficult music and what they viewed as awkward suspensions of disbelief. One critic even wrote, “The work is intended, one learns, to poke fun. As far as I am able to discern, it pokes fun chiefly at those who paid money for it.”

Homesick and tired of travel, Prokofiev returned to Russia, where his works were gaining in popularity. Luckily, now, a century later, that acclaim has spread worldwide.

The Love for Three Oranges is now performed with some regularity, but it’s the concerto that’s become a staple. While it was not an overnight sensation, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 grew more and more popular over the course of the composer’s lifetime due to its highly contrasting sections, witty melodies, and flashy passages for the soloist. World-renowned concert pianist Yuja Wang describes it as one of Prokofiev’s “most perfectly written compositions.” It is now considered a cornerstone of concert piano repertoire and a key part of the classical canon.

3. June 15, 1933: A Historic Price Premiere

A 2009 discovery of manuscripts in an Illinois attic has led to the gradual reclamation of the composer Florence Price. Yet considering the impact she made during her lifetime, this composer’s omission from the archives of classical music is disturbing and shocking. Among many other achievements, Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor was the first work composed by a Black woman to be performed by a major orchestra. And that orchestra was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Here’s how it happened. In the early 1930s, CSO music director Frederick Stock was scouring Chicago for new composers to feature. A big celebration was coming up — the city’s centennial — and he wanted as many Chicago composers as possible to be represented during the summer of celebrations. But whose work would be the centerpiece? After searching through multiple submissions and poring over scores, it was Price’s unpublished Symphony No. 1 that Stock couldn’t out of his head. It was settled: despite not knowing anything about the composer, or the piece’s background, Stock selected this work as the centerpiece of that summer series.

Price’s symphony made a huge splash among critics and concertgoers alike. As the composer walked out on stage to take a bow alongside an all-white, all-male orchestra, it sent a powerful message about the value of her work as a Black American composer.

Unfortunately, Price was never able to outrun people and organizations that blocked her work as her career progressed. She faced unthinkable prejudice because of her gender, race, and even marital status, all of which robbed her of countless opportunities. Even Stock, her first big public defender, showed hesitance in programming her work again. These injustices are not negated as the composer’s works finally begin receive more recognition, but audiences can enjoy the pivotal work knowing that Price’s first symphony, which once resonated loud and strong, continues to ring out today.

4. November 1, 1954: Opera Royalty’s First US Appearances Launch Lyric

The smashing success of the Lyric Opera’s very first production was due, in large part, to a very special guest.

Chicago had been in opera limbo since the beginning of the century. A succession of short-lived troupes and financial problems made opera an intermittent feature of the city’s art-scene. So much so that the monumental Civic Opera House had no company in residence from 1946 through the early in 1950s.

That all changed with Carol Fox, an opera enthusiast in her 20s. The US’s first female impresario co-founded Lyric Opera of Chicago (initially called Lyric Theatre of Chicago) with fellow 28-year-old Lawrence Kelly as well as opera conductor Nicola Rescigno. For the company’s first season, Fox was on the lookout for talent. She knew she needed a star — someone who would really help elevate the Chicago opera company’s debut. After a long search, Fox managed to snag 31-year-old Maria Callas.

Despite being born in New York, the soprano Callas began her singing career when her family moved back to Greece during her childhood. It was there that she established herself, before moving on to Italy for chances to headline larger opera houses. Her fame grew quickly; she traveled the world for various roles as she developed her tone. By the time 1954 rolled around, the diva’s fame was just big enough to attract attention, but not yet too big for the very first production of a brand-new company in Chicago.

Callas starred in many roles for Lyric’s very first fall season, debuting in the company’s first-ever performance as the title role in Bellini’s Norma. Chicago audiences fell head-over-heels for the soprano overnight. Chicago Tribune critic Claudia Cassidy even notes that in one performance, Callas was called “before the curtain 22 times in an ovation that lasted 17 minutes.” She stayed with Lyric throughout the fall, starring as Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata as well as Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. In the spring of 1955, Callas sung the role of Elvira in Bellini’s I puritani, and Leonora in Verdi’s Il trovatore. Most popular of all was Callas’s role as Cio-Cio-San in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, whose performance she workshopped alongside the legendary Japanese soprano Hizi Koyke.

Unfortunately, legal summons from a New York payment dispute cut short her visit with Lyric. And “La Divina” would return to the city only three more times before her death in 1977. Yet her impact had been felt. Though her time in Chicago was short, her few performances here helped catapult Callas — and the company she helped inaugurate — to legendary heights.

5. April 30, 1991: CSO Centennial Celebrates Legendary Brass

The centennial Chicago Symphony Orchestra season was met with a year of fanfare at Symphony Center. The orchestra commissioned 14 new works. And between the season-opening concert on October 6, 1990, and the concert honoring the official 100th anniversary on October 18, 1991, the CSO hosted many of the biggest names of classical music from Luciano Pavarotti to Yo-Yo Ma.

One of the many commissions during the CSO’s centennial season was by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Less than a decade prior, in 1983, Zwilich had become the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her work Symphony No. 1 (Three Movements for Orchestra). For the centennial, Zwilich was approached by the CSO to create two works for an often underappreciated instrument: the trombone. The significance was twofold. For one, the trombone is a vital part of CSO’s legendary brass section. But Zwiliich also wanted to contribute to the classical body of repertoire available for the trombone.

The first work, a Concert for Trombone and Orchestra, was written for CSO trombone player Jay Friedman and premiered in 1989. The second work, Concerto for Bass Trombone, Strings, Timpani, and Cymbals, received its world premiere on April 30, 1991.

5.5: Crosstown Collaborations for Chicago’s Symphony and Classical Station

Fun fact: in the same year that the CSO was celebrating its centennial, WFMT was celebrating its 50th anniversary! To celebrate, WFMT commissioned a fanfare called Chicago Skyline by Chicago composer Shulamit Ran, who was then CSO composer-in-residence. Inspired in part by Chicago’s towering skyscrapers, the piece opened a CSO concert on December 12, 1991, the day before WFMT’s 50th anniversary,

6. June 2003: A Concentration Camp Opera Reverentially Reimagined

The circumstances surrounding the opera Brundibár by Hans Krása are solemn. The one act opera was originally created in 1938 for a children’s opera competition, then smuggled into the Terezín ghetto once deportations of Bohemian and Moravian Jews began under the Nazi regime. From there, the work has a tragically complicated history. It did offer the interned a brief distraction from the horrors they faced, and the Czech libretto gave voice to defiance in a language the Nazis couldn’t understand. But after the show’s first performances in Terezín, Nazi officials realized they could harness this opera for propaganda: it was short, the story was universal, and the casting called for children to play many of the main roles. The opera was performed about 55 times in the ghetto over the years, including in 1944, during to quell international suspicion during a Red Cross visit. That same year, Krása was sent to Auschwitz, where he was killed.

After the war, Brundibár disappeared for many years. This itself makes the adaptation by the Chicago Opera Theater in 2003 a special revival. But the original opera only made up part of this premiere.

The English-language reimagining of Brundibár does not separate the joyful opera from its tragic surroundings. It layers a story within a story, depicting the circumstances of the opera’s concentration camp performances before entering into the fairytale world of the original Adolf Hoffmeister libretto.

The David Kersnar production included the work of well-known artists. Maurice Sendak, illustrator behind children’s books such as Where the Wild Things Are, designed the opera’s sets. Sendak brought aboard his friend, Pulitzer-winner Tony Kushner — the writer behind Angels in America and Lincoln, among many other works — to create an English-language libretto for the opera inspired by Hoffmeister’s original. In conjunction with the reimagined opera, Sendak and Kushner collaborated to publish a children’s book version.

The 2003 version’s shocking and affecting ending exemplifies the power of this reimagining. The opera’s final chord is underscored by the shriek of a train whistle heading for Auschwitz. Audiences are left with the weight of the circumstances of this opera, its composer, and its historical moment.