Romeo and Juliet Program

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P R O F I L E S | L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O
February 22 - March 19, 2016 | 31
Ramiro/Cinderella , Brighella/Ariadne auf
Naxos, Sellem/The Rake’s Progress, Dorvil/La
scala di seta, Gherardo/Gianni Schicchi, and
Almeric/Iolanta. Lei holds a master’s degree
from the Manhattan School of Music, where
he was heard as Léon/ The Ghosts of Versailles,
Arturo/Lucia di Lammermoor, and Uriel/The
Creation. Other important credits include
appearances as tenor soloist in Handel’s
Messiah (with the Cecilia Chorus of New York
at Carnegie Hall) and in Stravinsky’s Pulcinella
(Music Academy of the West), as well as
Jupiter/Semele (Schwabacher Summer Concert
during his tenure with San Francisco Opera’s
Merola Program), Don Ottavio/Don Giovanni
(Banff Centre Opera), Aeneas/Dido and Aeneas
(Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music),
and the Royal Herald and Count Lerma/Don
Carlo (Opera Philadelphia). Lei has received
competition awards from the Gerda Lissner
Foundation (most recently second prize),
Opera Index, Inc., Licia Albanese-Puccini
Foundation, Giulio Gari Foundation, and the
Mario Lanza Institute. Mingjie Lei is sponsored
by Maurice J. and Patricia Frank.
EMMANUEL
VILLAUME (Conductor)
Previously at Lyric Opera:
Five operas since 2003-04,
most recently La bohème
(2012-13); Les contes
d’Hoffmann (2011-12);
The Merry Widow (2009-
10).
The French conductor is music director of
The Dallas Opera, where this season he has
conducted Tosca (which also recently brought
him to Covent Garden), and the world
premiere of Mark Adamo’s Becoming Santa
Claus. Highlights later this season include
Show Boat in Dallas and Villaume’s return
to The Santa Fe Opera for La fanciulla del
West. Music director and chief conductor
of both the Prague Philharmonia and the
Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, Villaume
collaborated with the latter ensemble and Anna
Netrebko for an acclaimed European tour of
Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta (recently released on
CD). He served as Spoleto Festival USA’s music
director for opera and orchestra from 2001 to
2010. During that time he led numerous
symphonic concerts (including a much-praised
Mahler symphony cycle) and numerous operas,
including works of Mozart, Wagner, Delibes,
Puccini, Charpentier, Strauss, and Henze (Der
Prinz von Homburg, American premiere).
Internationally Villaume has triumphed
repeatedly in his native repertoire, including
Les pêcheurs de perles (Santa Fe), Les contes
d’Hoffmann (Covent Garden, Madrid, Turin),
Carmen (Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles),
Werther (San Francisco, Washington), Samson
et Dalila (Met, Marseille), Pelléas et Mélisande
(Buenos Aires), Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-bleue
(Turin), and Massenet’s Chérubin (Cagliari,
DVD). He has appeared with prestigious
opera companies and orchestras in both North
America (Boston, Montreal, San Francisco,
Detroit, Washington) and abroad (London,
Paris, Milan, Radio France, Bonn, Sydney).
BARTLETT SHER
(Director)
Lyric Opera debut
Equally successful in
theater, opera, and
musicals, the celebrated
American director, who
has been nominated for six
Tony Awards, received both the Tony and
the Drama Desk Award for the universally
acclaimed Broadway revival of South Pacific
(2008). On Broadway Sher has also directedThe
Bridges of Madison County, Women on the Verge
of a Nervous Breakdown, Golden Boy, The Light
in the Piazza, Awake and Sing!, Joe Turner’s
Come and Gone, and the current revivals of The
King and I and Fiddler on the Roof. Operatic
credits include Faust (Baden-Baden), Nico
Muhly’s Two Boys (English National Opera,
world premiere), Romeo and Juliet (Salzburg
Festival, La Scala), and Mourning Becomes
Electra (Seattle Opera, New York City Opera).
At the Metropolitan Opera he has directed
The Barber of Seville, Les contes d’Hoffmann,
Two Boys (American premiere), Le Comte Ory,
Otello, and L’elisir d’amore. In 2008 Sher was
named resident director at New York’s Lincoln
Center Theater. He has served as company
director at Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater
and as artistic director at Seattle’s Intiman
Playhouse, where his productions ranged
stylistically from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline
(2002 Callaway Award) and Goldoni’s Servant
of Two Masters to Shaw’s Arms and the Man,
Bergman’s Nora, Craig Lucas’s The Dying
Gaul, and the world premieres of The Light in
the Piazza, Joan Holden’s Nickel and Dimed,
and Lucas’s The Singing Forest .
MICHAEL YEARGAN
(Set Designer)
Previously at Lyric Opera:
Eight productions since
1991, most recently
Nabucco (2015-16, 1997-
98); The Sound of Music
(2013-14); La bohème
(2012-13).
The American designer’s recent work in opera
includes The Barber of Seville (Metropolitan
Opera), Carmen (Washington National
Opera), andLuisaMiller(SanFranciscoOpera).
WNO will present the Ring cycle in Yeargan’s
designs later this season, and his Carmen
will be seen at Toronto’s Canadian Opera
Company. Yeargan’s vast operatic experience
also encompasses much-acclaimed work in
New York (including new Met productions of
L’elisir d’amore, Les contes d’Hoffmann, and Le
Comte Ory), Los Angeles (Madama Butterfly,
Simon Boccanegra), Houston (Rigoletto),
London (Aida), and Sydney (La traviata, The
Barber of Seville). Operatic world premieres
include John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby
(Met) and both André Previn’s A Streetcar
Named Desire and Jake Heggie’s Dead Man
Walking (San Francisco). Yeargan is currently
represented on Broadway by the revivals of The
King and I and Fiddler on the Roof. Previous
Broadway productions include The Bridges
of Madison County, Blood and Gifts, and the
revivals of Golden Boy and The Road to Mecca.
His designs have been seen in many major
regional theaters nationwide, such as Hartford
Stage Company and the Long Wharf Theatre.
Yeargan holds Tony Awards for South Pacific
(2008) and A Light in the Piazza (2005) and
a Drama Desk Award for Awake and Sing!
(2006). He is resident set designer at the Yale
Repertory Theatre and Professor of Stage
Design at Yale School of Drama.
CATHERINE ZUBER
(Costume Designer )
Previously at Lyric Opera:
Carousel (2014-15);
The Barber of Seville
(2013-14).
In both opera and theater,
the British-born designer
has created costumes for many greatly
acclaimed productions internationally. This
Romeo and Juliet production premiered at the
2008 Salzburg Festival and was subsequently
remounted at Milan’s La Scala. In recent
seasons Zuber has designed five productions at
the Metropolitan Opera, as well as La forza del
destino (Washington), Faust (Baden-Baden),
Carmen (English National Opera), and the
Ring cycle (Washington, San Francisco). The
12-time Tony nominee has won the award
for South Pacific, The Coast of Utopia, Awake
and Sing!, The Light in the Piazza, The Royal
Family, and most recently in 2015 for The King
and I. Her remarkable record of successes on
Broadway encompasses musical theater (Gigi,
The Bridges of Madison County, How to Succeed
in Business Without Really Trying, Women