- COT/Corey DiNardo
- Andrew Wilkowske and Cassidy Smith in The Emperor of Atlantis
This weekend, for the first time since its move from the Athenaeum to the Harris Theater a decade ago, Chicago Opera Theater is opening a subscription-season show in a different venue. The double bill of Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis and Carl Orff’s The Clever One will have a four-performance run beginning Saturday (and continuing June 4, 6, and 8) at DePaul’s Merle Reskin Theatre.
In conjunction with the operas, COT is hosting a screening of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator at noon on Sunday, June 1, at the Music Box. Shot in 1939 and 1940, this broadly comic and dead-serious parody is Chaplin’s first “talkie” and a strikingly bold response to a threat that the United States—which would subsequently force Chaplin into exile—had yet to acknowledge. The film will be followed by a discussion and excerpts from the operas.
