Anthony Freud, the leader of the storied Lyric Opera of Chicago since 2011 and a skilled and empathetic navigator of changing times in the opera world, plans to step down next summer.
“This is my 30th year as an opera director, and I will be 66 next month,” Freud told the Tribune in an interview Monday in his office at the Lyric Opera House. “This feels like the right time for a new chapter. And I believe it is a coherent and logical time from a Lyric perspective.”
After his exit from Lyric on July 31, 2024, Freud said he plans to move back to his native Britain with his husband. Prior to arriving at Lyric, Freud was general director of the Houston Grand Opera from 2006 to 2011 and head of the Welsh National Opera from 1994 to 2005.
Given the length of the planning cycle in the opera world, Freud’s influence certainly will be felt on the 2024-25 season and even as far ahead as 2027. Nonetheless, he said, “there is scope to make change.”
Freud was the first general director appointed from outside the close-knit Lyric world. A 28-year-old impresaria named Carol Fox co-founded the company in 1954 and Ardis Krainik, the general director who followed, was Fox’s deputy. She was followed by William Mason, Freud’s predecessor, who also had spent years at the Lyric.
By contrast, Lyric was the third major opera company Freud had run.
Freud said he was most proud of the partnerships he forged through such projects as Lyric Unlimited, the department dedicated to community and educational initiatives. Such cooperation outside the traditional opera realm had not previously been part of Lyric’s DNA.
He also said he was proud that the company had not hibernated during the pandemic, but created risky but hugely successful online programming reaching hundreds of thousands of opera lovers around the world and, notably, presented a production of “Twilight: Gods,” Yuval Sharon’s radical drive-through adaptation of Wagner’s “Gotterdammerung” in 13 acres of the Millennium Lakeside Parking Garage. That production, arguably more than any other, was symbolic of the arts’ refusal to be cowed by what turned out to be a devastating pandemic.
In general, Freud argued over his tenure that opera companies must operate on twin tracks, serving the core audience with favorites such as “Aida” and “La Boheme,”
More Top Picks Best Whiteboard Calendars For Students
balanced with new operas like Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up In My Bones” and “The Factotum,” the new opera from Will Liverman and DJ King Rico set on Chicago’s South Side.“I’ve tried both to honor Lyric’s traditions and take it in new directions,” Freud said.
Those new directions included producing Broadway musicals in the spring, including an enormously successful staging of “Fiddler on the Roof” from Berlin, as well as bringing the Joffrey Ballet to the Lyric, filling its famously massive theater with the company’s annual production of “The Nutcracker.” At the time, Freud noted that the pairing of opera company and ballet company was common in European opera houses and overdue in the U.S.
From an audience point of view, Freud has introduced cushier new seats, part of an extensive pandemic-era renovation of the Opera House.
When the Lyric opens for its new season this fall, there also will be a freshly glassed-in outer lobby, offering patrons a climate-controlled buffer from the elements during Chicago’s harsh winters.
Other notable projects during Freud’s tenure included a stirring production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Macbeth,” directed by David McVicar as Lyric’s first post-pandemic return to full strength. The COVID-19 crisis interfered with Freud’s desire to stage Richard Wagner’s entire Ring cycle, but three quarters of it still made it to the stage.
Asked if he felt he was leaving behind a smaller company, typical of the times in the performing arts, Freud said he preferred to see Lyric as a “busier organization, doing more activity of far greater variety.”
“We still have a significant subscriber base,” Freud said, “as well as a large number of people who never have stepped foot in the place before.”
As for how he would improve on the future, he said that “the performing arts are not sufficiently exploited by the city and those in proximity to the city. Chicago is a global center of culture, a potential magnet for international tourism and the arts deserve far more investment.”
Freud’s exit is part of an unprecedented wave of post-pandemic exits by high-profile arts leaders, including Robert Falls’ departure from the Goodman Theatre, Barbara Gaines at Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Lyric’s own much-loved musical director Andrew Davis, replaced by the enigmatic Italian conductor Enrique Mazzola, one of Freud’s most prominent hires.
“I’ve always felt,” Freud said, a measured man catching his emotions, “that the more unlikely the project, the more exciting.”
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Sign up for the Theater Loop newsletter: Coming soon, the baiduhai will launch a new weekly newsletter with the latest news and reviews from America’s hottest theater city. Theater critic Chris Jones will share a behind-the-curtain look at what you need to know about Chicago’s theater scene.