75 stories by "Deanna Isaacs"
Chicago Opera Theater's exploration of the civil rights movement traces one fictional woman's journey.
Dan Shore started working on his one-act opera, Freedom Ri…
"Honor incarnate" meets a dirtbag in Puccini's opera, with tragic results.
A Letter from Butterfly Dear Chicago Reader:…
Marin Alsop takes on a newly created role at the music festival.
Marin Alsop is stepping into the newly created position of chief conductor and curator at the Ra…
Renée Fleming stars in Adam Guettel's rapturous romantic musical.
It's a dangerous thing to marry a stranger: the beautiful girl passing through town; the impet…
Sondra Radvanovsky sings the last acts of Donizetti's three Tudor queen operas.
Berwyn born, internationally acclaimed soprano Sondra Radvanovsky is performing a…
Chicago Opera Theater's Everest is stunning contemporary opera.
It was a great weekend for contemporary opera in Chicago. Lyric's not-to-be-missed Dead Man Walki…
There are three public performances of Lyric's new children's opera this weekend.
Contemporary stories are having a welcome moment at Lyric Opera. While Dead Man…
Jake Heggie's opera took nearly 20 years to make the journey to Lyric, but it's not to be missed.
It took nearly 20 years for composer Jake Heggie and librettist…
Lyric opens a multiyear exploration of early Verdi with this 1849 opera.
Lyric Opera is launching a multiyear exploration of the early works of Giuseppe Verdi wi…
Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, one of more than 350 Open House Chicago sites this weekend, is significant musically and architecturally.
With more than 350 …
The season opener is as much fun as you can have at the opera.
Lyric Opera has married pitch-perfect casting to go-for-broke direction in its season opener, The …
Acres of art and a chance to observe capitalism at its looniest
Let's get right to the important stuff: the hot fashion tip from EXPO Chicago 2019, the big inter…
Endangered: Chicago's 'best' postmodern building
Hello, global visitors to the third Chicago Architecture Biennial. Welcome!…
Music director Andrew Davis will be succeeded by Enrique Mazzola, in two years
Lyric Opera of Chicago announced today that music director Andrew Davis will end …
Theater on the Lake kicks off its season with a free three-day seminar for the Chicago theater community.
As this cold, wet June wore on and no schedule had been…
In a tour de force, an a cappella trio of women capture the drudgery of factory sewing.
Third Eye Theatre Ensemble is offering a labor of love this weekend with …
But a program of Stravinsky, Ravel, and Rossini at Symphony Center shows neither to its best advantage.
In an interesting experiment this weekend, two of the cit…
The Lyric's faithful revival addresses immigration, discrimination, and changing neighborhoods, but it's the women who are the stars.
Sometime in the 1940s, it o…
It'll banish all your memories of English-class torture.
Whatever your history with Moby-Dick"even if you were a disgruntled teenager on a forced English class m…
Lyric Opera's outreach arm presents a contemporary chamber opera that grew out of two true stories.
This is what the bad guys did in WWII: rounded up entire fami…
The Chicago theater community got a pair of year-end jolts with December announcements about the demise of Oracle Productions and the near demise of the Hypocrites.
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Neo-Futurists founder Greg Allen made the surprising announcement today that he's ending the 28-year Chicago run of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind on December 31st. He's doing so in …
Russ Tutterow was a playwright's "greatest advocate and friend," Goodman Theatre artistic director Robert Falls said Monday night, welcoming about 300 members of Chicago's theater community …
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Surely no words ever written by any theater critic stirred more local buzz than Michael Billington's 2004 observation in London's Guardian that "Chicago . . . [is] the current theatre capita…
