“For Enrique Mazzola, the path to the conductor’s podium began when he was a boy in the children’s chorus of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan,” writes Michael Cooper in Thursday’s (9/12) New York Times. “ ‘Backstage, there were all these monitors … used by the stage managers,’ Mr. Mazzola, who was announced on Thursday as the next music director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, recalled… ‘I would spend hours and hours watching the conductor.’ Now, after distinguishing himself with stylish, energetic performances of bel canto operas, French repertoire and early Verdi, he will succeed Andrew Davis, who plans to conclude his two-decade tenure in Chicago at the end of the 2020-21 season. It will be a major changing of the guard at Lyric, which has been struggling … as audience habits shift…. Mr. Mazzola … is currently the principal guest conductor at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and was until recently artistic and music director of the Orchestre National d’Île-de-France in Paris…. He said that he had been drawn to Lyric Opera since he first conducted there, in 2016, leading Donizetti’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor.’ … He will return there in October to lead Verdi’s ‘Luisa Miller.’ ”
Posted September 16, 2019
