More and more operas are adding Broadway classics to their repertoire, in part to try to attract younger (merely middle-aged) audiences. Lyric Opera has in recent years used a classic musical to close its season, with quite a bit of success. According to Lyric’s website, its 2014 production of The Sound of Music sold the most tickets of any show in its history—71,074 tickets over 30 performances. So I suppose the idea is here to stay.
Fredj’s production combines the work of a fair number of artists from the Théâtre du Châtelet (among them choreographer Lynne Page and costume designer Anthony Powell) and a cast full of fine actor-singers, led by Richard E. Grant as Professor Higgins and Lisa O’Hare as Eliza Doolittle. The sets and costumes at Lyric are always amazing, but rarely are they as tightly tied into the story being told as they are here—they’re no mere eye candy. For example, the scenes set in and around Covent Garden comment on the social distance between Higgins’s posh set and the down-and-out world of the cockneys. The addition of a replica of Brâncuşi’s 1923 sculpture Bird in Space to the decor of Mrs. Higgins’s flat, though anachronistic (the story is set roughly ten years before the sculpture), is a sly comment on how avant-garde both mother and son are.
Through 5/21, times vary; see website Civic Opera House 20 N. Wacker 312-827-5600lyricopera.org $16-$199
