Lawrence Edelson

The Lyric Opera of Chicago, housed in the grand-scale, 13,563-seat Civic Opera building on North Wacker Drive, has been viewed as the city’s predominant opera stage since 1954. And, starting in 2020, it has shared that stage with the altogether remarkable Joffrey Ballet.

But there is another formidable opera company in the city– the Chicago Opera Theater (COT)– that was founded in 1973. It performs on a number of stages, including the Studebaker Theater, the Harris Theater, and those of a smaller size. Yet, there is nothing “small” about COT or its adventurous productions of both new and rarely performed operas.

Now, after serving seven years as COT’s Music Director– from 2017 to the 2023-2024 season– Lidiya Yankovskaya (who was born into a Jewish family in St. Petersburg, Russia, and emigrated to the United States at the age of nine), has passed the baton to Lawrence Edelson. Edelson holds the title of General Director and is responsible for both the company’s administrative management and its artistic leadership.

He also is continuing to run the New York-based American Lyric Theater, which he founded in 2005, and which has created the first full-time program for emerging opera composers, librettists, and dramaturgs in the U.S.

Born in Boston, and raised in Ottawa from the age of eight (it was home to his dad, who he described as “an observant Jew who served as president of a synagogue”), Edelson studied musicology and voice before moving to New York to study dance at the Joffrey Ballet School. (“That was something I did to lose weight,” he confessed, laughing). He also spent three summers in Tel Aviv as a singer, and five as a stage director. He now lives in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood.

The first opera Edelman decided to direct in Chicago was Leonora , a work by the Italian composer Ferdinando Paer that debuted in 1804, and just had its North American premiere at the Studebaker Theatre in October.

Edelson said he is already in dialogue with the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, noting that “a great opera singer should be a great actor,” and adding that operas, which are often performed in smaller theaters these days, require a great deal of authenticity.

“I think people need to see themselves on stage,” he explained. “And that can happen in many different ways– through the stories being told, the casting, the design choices. Audiences should, in one way or another, feel represented in the work we do. I will love getting to know Chicago better, with the Chicago Opera Theater providing an opportunity to build on the city’s history.”

Hedy Weiss, a longtime Chicago arts critic, was the Theater and Dance critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1984 to 2018, and currently writes for WTTW-TV’s website and contributes to the Chicago Tonight program. (Photo credit: Rich Hein)