He studied legislation however after college rapidly took a job at Sadler’s Wells Theater, earlier than becoming a member of Welsh Nationwide Opera. He rose to move of inventive administration, then left for a brief stint on the document label Philips Classics, the place he labored with eminences like Jessye Norman, Colin Davis and John Eliot Gardiner. He returned to Wales as basic director, staying for 11 years earlier than shifting to Houston in 2006 and Chicago in 2011.
The 2 American firms had been each based within the mid-Fifties, however Lyric feels nearer to the 141-year-old Metropolitan Opera. “The sense of Lyric being a legacy establishment — it’s older than its years,” Freud mentioned. “Opera in Chicago goes again to the 1850s, and its constructing opened in 1929. The historical past of opera within the metropolis belies Lyric’s company youth.”
There are benefits to being — or at the very least feeling like — a legacy establishment, however it may possibly additionally result in a company seeming caught in its methods. Freud was the primary of Lyric’s 4 basic administrators to return from outdoors the corporate.
And he introduced new concepts to what was, effectively earlier than the pandemic, already a struggling financial mannequin. The corporate struck a deal to make its theater the house of the Joffrey Ballet, and elevated its outreach to colleges and communities via Lyric Limitless — an bold schooling program modeled on one in Houston — in addition to programming that drew on creators from historically underrepresented teams.
Freud deliberate enormous initiatives like Berlioz’s “Les Troyens,” Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s “The Passenger” and the unique French model of Verdi’s “Don Carlos.” The postseason musical runs, which required a particular settlement with the corporate’s unions, had been added to feed the underside line, although not all of the productions had been financially profitable. Simply earlier than the pandemic, Lyric employed Enrique Mazzola, a popular maestro, as its music director.
The Covid disaster, tough for each arts group, was notably arduous on Lyric, which was about to open three costly, decade-in-the-making runs of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle when it was pressured to lock down.
