Sondra Radvanovsky (Photo: Kyle Flubacker)
Lyric Opera of Chicago announced Tuesday its plans for the 2025-2026 season, which includes six mainstage operas, two Lyric premieres, several new productions, and two special concerts that feature the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus. The opera house will be busier next year, with 59 performances compared to this year’s 47.
2025-26 is also the first complete season with John Mangum, general director, president, and CEO, at the helm. Mangum joined the organization in 2024, previously having served as CEO and executive director of the Houston Symphony as well as leadership roles at San Francisco’s, Los Angeles’s, and New York’s leading symphony orchestras. Many of the 2025-2026 titles were already in the pipeline once Mangum took the reins: the first season fully planned by the General Director won’t be until 2028.
Leading soprano Sandra Radvanovsky opens the season in the Lyric premiere of Cherubini’s Medea, running October 11-26, 2025. Appearing alongside Radvanovsky, who hails from the Chicago suburbs, is renowned tenor Matthew Polenzani, an Evanston native and alumus of the Ryan Opera Center. Medea is a new coproduction with the Metropolitan Opera, the Greek National Opera, and the Canadian Opera Company. Enrique Mazzola leads the performances.
Next up is a beloved verismo double bill: Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. The two often-paired titles return to Lyric for the first time in more than 15 years. Pagliacci is very close to Mazzola’s heart: the Music Director sang in La Scala’s Children’s Choir for the 1982 film version of Pagliacci of the opera. The Lyric Opera’s last production of Pagliacci, filmed and release online in 2021, also won two Midwest Emmys. Mazzola will conduct the double-bill, which stars Yulia Matochina and SeokJong Baek (both making their Lyric debuts) in Cavalleria, plus Gabriella Reyes and Russell Thomas in Pagliacci. Sought-after Verdi baritone Quinn Kelsey, also a Ryan Opera Center alum, sings in both titles. Performances will run from November 1-23, 2025.
Enrique Mazzola (Photo by Kyle Flubacker)
November also features three performances of Carl Orff’s scenic cantata Carmina Burana. Putting the Lyric Opera Chorus and the work of chorus director Michael Black center stage, the program is again led by Mazzola and welcomes vocal soloists Jasmine Habersham, David Portillo, and Ian Rucker. A projected environment and other lighting effects will add visual intrigue to the concert performances.
Closing out Lyric’s 2025 calendar year is a curious world premiere: an opera house adaptation of a landmark alt rock album. Chicago’s Billy Corgan and his band Smashing Pumpkins released their seminal album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, in October 1995. For the 30th anniversary of the album, Corgan collaborates with Lyric for a unique crossover event that harnesses the power of the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus as well as guest artists. Lyric Opera invited Billy Corgan to speak about the historic collaboration in the Tuesday press conference.
The musician was adamant about not calling the calling the work a “rock opera” or “opera going rock”. “I’ve been coming here for 20 years,” elaborated Corgan, ” and I really want this work to play within the confines of the Lyric.” The piece will focus on highlighting its opera house setting, from new orchestrations of the songs to highlighting various opera soloists. Billy Corgan will also sing a few songs but really wants to “get out of the way” and put the focus on the music, as well as Chicago – the city the album is about. “I’ve always tried to bring Chicago with me wherever I go,” Corgan states. “Whatever I can do to assist young people coming in [to the Lyric Opera] is important to me.”
Billy Corgan (Photo: Big Foot Media)
The New Year opens with a Richard Strauss title — Salome. It’s a work that is “a great vehicle for an exceptional dynamic soprano” said Mangum, and Mazzola agreed. It’s why they’ve decided to cast Elena Stikhina in her Lyric debut as the femme fatale title role. The 1940s Italy-set production also sees the Lyric debut of Nicholas Brownlee as Jochanaan. Czech conductor Tomáš Netopil takes the podium for the performances.
In February, the company mounts Così fan tutte, Mozart’s 1790 comic opera with Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The action centers around sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella and their respective fiancés, Guglielmo and Ferrando, who plan to prove that “all women” are fickle in love, with hilarity ensuing. The four lovers are played by three Lyric debutants — Jacquelyn Stucker (Fiordiligi), Cecili Molinari (Dorabella), and Anthony León (Ferrando) — and Ian Rucker, a Ryan alum who is also a soloist in Carmina burana. Veteran artists Ana María Martínez and Rod Gilfry round out the cast as Despina and Don Alfonso. It is the second Mozart opera in a trilogy planned by Mazzola, which started with The Marriage of Figaro in 2024-25, and will end with Don Giovanni in 2026-27 season.
Also in February, Renée Fleming visits Chicago on February 5 for a one-night-only recital: Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene, a program based on her Grammy winning vocal album. With pianist Inon Barnatan, Fleming will explore humans’ relationship with nature in wide-ranging vocal selections past and present. The recital, in collaboration with National Geographic, will allow audience members to see imagery from the magazine’s award-winning photographers.
In March, a new-to-Chicago production of an audience favorite: Madama Butterfly. Korean soprano Karah Son makes her Lyric debut as Puccini’s tragic heroine Cio-Cio San, opposite Evan LeRoy Johnson making his Lyric debut as Pinkerton. Domingo Hindoyan conducts this new production, which includes an all-female, all-Japanese design team. Lyric’s Stage Director Matthew Ozawa hopes the new presentation will both respect the opera’s Japanese origins while also challenging some of its outdated stereotypes.
El ultimo sueño de Frida y Diego (Photo: Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera)
Soon after, the company presents a contemporary work: El último suenno de Frida y Diego (The Last Dream of Frida and Diego). With music by Gabriela Lena Frank and a libretto by Nilo Cruz, the Spanish-language opera premiered in 2022 and taps into fantasy and art history to explore the work, lives, and afterlives of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Daniela Mack brings Frida to the stage, with Alfredo Daza as Diego, a role the Mexican baritone created. The cast includes Ana María Martínez and Key’mon Murrah, who makes his company debut in a role that he created. Roberto Kalb, who conducted the opera at its premiere and subsequent production at San Francisco Opera, will make his Lyric debut leading the performances. The production will head to the Metropolitan Opera in May to close out the New York company’s season.
Finally, 2025-26 ends with safronia, a world premiere opera that will receive two performances. Conceived by Chicago’s first poet laureate avery r. young, the Afro-surrealist work follows the Booker family as they return to their Southern hometown to bury their patriarch. young previously collaborated with Lyric in 2021’s Twilight: Gods, an innovative project adaptation of Wagner’s Ring Cycle presented during the COVID pandemic. As the work’s librettist and composer, young said wanted to capture many types of styles – “like you stumbled upon a church on Chicago Ave that had Curtis Mayfield… and Mavis Staples.” Performances will take place on April 17th and April 18th, 2026.
Coming off of last season’s massive success with Singing in the Rain, Lyric will also host movie nights in October and April: the Disney animated movie Coco (2017) as well as Mary Poppins (1964) respectively. The movie nights, as well as the collaborative concert with Billy Corgan, were a few events that new Director John Mangum had a direct role in planning. It’s part of a strategy to continue expanding the reach of Lyric beyond its typical audience. For example, the opera house also hopes to expand access to it open dress rehearsals, expanding the program from welcoming 2,000 students annually, to inviting 1,000 students per dress rehearsal. When asked about his vision for the Lyric Opera as he steps more fully into his role, Mangum noted that a desire to see Lyric at the vanguard of opera, “supporting both breaking new work, and finding a balance that still represents a 4-century long art form.”
For more information, visit lyricopera.org.
