The Mikado

Lyric Opera of Chicago
Photo Credit: Dan Rest

I've wanted to see this for years. I used to play the record in the music library at night when I was in college, over and over again, when I wanted something uplifting to listen to and had some spare time. And, I've played the overture a few times with various groups.

So, it was exciting when I saw it on the list for this season at Lyric.

It was definitely fun. There are things you don't realize until you see something in production, things that don't translate on a recording. For instance, you don't realize the real weight that is added to the entire opera/operetta by the part of Katisha. I wonder if it would have the longevity without the pathos and balance she brings to all the silliness, all the superficiality of emotions on the stage.

This production was nice: clean, crisp lines, good singers.

I'll never stop complaining that the Lyric Opera house is too big. We pay about $50 for our seats each, which is high for me. We are in the back and we can't even hear the cell phone announcements. No, really, it's a garbled mess. I have yet to be in any other theater of any kind with this problem. Nothing is properly amplified for some of the seats in the back and on the sides. So, I can tell the singing is good or bad, but I can't properly judge the strength of the voices on stage. A few of the leads seemed to have possibly average to smaller voices, but who can tell, really? I couldn't say for certain. I'm frustrated and don't know what to do about it. It's the big show in town, but if they had significant competition I'd be out of there in a heartbeat. We'll be at COT in the spring, but we won't see the likes of some of the heavy hitter big names over there like we will here.

Speaking of big names, it was fun to see James Morris cast as the Mikado after seeing him in Wagner. I'm surprised he came for this. It's not a huge role, but all the same, happy to have him.

The story is absolute nonsense. One thing I didn't realize is how much parallelism there is in the structure of the work. The Lord High Executioner's list song is paralleled in the second act by the Mikado's song. Yum-Yum has a song that is paralleled a bit later by Katisha. There is balance to be found everywhere.

The Mikado is a delight. Who can say it's not? I imagine there could be wrong productions, but it would be so difficult to wrest the absolute delight of the lyrics and the music out of it - you'd have to work fairly hard to make that happen. We were certainly happy enough with this production. It was a big, adequate production of one of the lighter comedic works. Typically, we go for a good tragedy - but, hey in something akin to the words of Forum, a tragedy tomorrow, a comedy tonight.