Lyric Opera's 2025-2026 season includes "Madama Butterfly," Smashing Pumpkins tribute
The Lyric Opera of Chicago unveiled the lineup for its 2025-2026 season Tuesday, featuring a blend of tradition and modern musical concerts.
The new season includes both "Madama Butterfly" and a tribute to the album that featured the song "Bullet with Butterfly Wings."
Fall 2025
The season begins with Luigi Cherubini's "Medea," Oct. 11 to Oct. 26. The millennia-old tragedy tells the story of the sorceress Medea, who has been spurned by her lover and abandoned in a foreign land, and who kills her own children in a twisted act of revenge.
The Lyric Opera says director David McVicar brings the story to "life — and gruesome death." Lyric Opera Music Director Enrique Mazzola serves as conductor, while soprano Sondra Radvanovsky appears as Medea and tenor Matthew Polenzani as Glasone.
From Nov. 1 through Nov. 25, the Lyric will stage Pietro Mascagni's "Cavalleria rusticana" and Ruggero Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci." In line with the theme of "Medea," these one-act operas explore the stories of spurned lovers and the lengths they'll go to avenge betrayal. In "Pagliacci," the spurned husband at the center of the plot, Canio, is the lead clown in a comedy troupe.
Mazzola conducts again, while Russell Thomas plays Canio in "Pagliacci" and Gabriella Reyes plays his wife, Nedda. In "Cavalleria rusticana," SeokJong Baek plays villager Turiddu, while Yulia Matochkina plays his lover Santuzza.
For three performances on Nov. 14, 16, and 18, Mazzola leads the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus in a performance of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana." The 1936 opus is based on a collection of medieval poetry. Its opening movement "O Fortuna," is best known, but operagoers on those November dates will get to hear the whole thing.
From Nov. 21 through Nov. 30, something completely different is in store — involving not spurned sorceresses or jilted clowns, but Junebug skippin' like a stone back during the Carter administration, and the world being a vampire sent to drain.
For "A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness," Billy Corgan has composed a new commission of Smashing Pumpkins' classic double album "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," which came out in the fall of 1995.
"You'll hear Billy Corgan and special guest artists along with the epic sound of the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus in a completely new sonic and visual experience," the Lyric Opera wrote. "Whether you love the Pumpkins and are excited to hear their music in a sumptuous new dimension, or you simply crave the opportunity to hear a new work inspired by the unexpected, this promises to be one of the can't-miss cultural collaborations of the season."
Winter 2026
A new-to-Chicago production of Richard Strauss' "Salome" takes the stage from Jan. 25 to Feb. 14, 2026. "Salome" is based on a one-act play by Oscar Wilde, which is itself an adaptation of the Biblical story of John the Baptist's martyrdom.
This latest rendition of "Salone" is set in 1940s fascist Italy, and is described by the performance arts organization as a "gory thrill ride" that "drips with decadence." Tomáš Netopil conducts and McVicar directs, while Elena Stikhina plays Salome, Brandon Jovanovich plays King Herod, and Nicholas Brownlee plays Jochanaan.
Meanwhile, Mozart's "Così fan tutte" comes just in time for Valentine's Day, from Feb. 1 to Feb. 15, 2026. In the opera, two soldiers named Ferrando and Guglielmo hatch a plan to switch places and try to court each other's fiancées — but the women know exactly what's happening from the get-go. This new-to-Chicago production takes the action to a 1930s-era seaside country club.
Mazolla conducts, Anthony León plays Ferrando, and Ian Rucker Guglielmo. Cecilia Molinari plays Ferrando's fiancée, Dorabella, and Jacquelyn Stucker plays Guglielmo's fiancée, Fiordiligi.
For one night only, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26, the revered Renée Fleming returns to the Lyric Opera with a program based on her 2023 Grammy Award-winning Best Classic Vocal Solo Album, "Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene." She with pianist Ian Bartman to a video curated by the National Geographic Society.
Spring 2026
As winter turns to spring, Giacomo Puccini's "Madama Butterfly' comes to the Lyric Opera stage from March 14 to April 12, 2026. Cio-Cio-San, or Madama Butterfly, is a geisha in love with Navy Lt. B.F. Pinkerton — whom everyone else knows will break her heart and destroy her life.
Domingo Hindoyan conducts, Karah Son plays Cio-Cio-San, and Evan LeRoy Johnson plays Pinkerton.
Concurrently, from March 21 through April 4, 2026, a much newer opera about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and her husband, artist Diego Rivera. "El último sueño de Frida y Diego" is set on Day of the Dead, and involves Kahlo crossing back from the underworld to spent 24 hours with the still-alive and grieving Rivera. The opera had its world premiere in 2022.
Roberto Kalb conducts, and Daniela Mack plays Frida — except on April 1, 2026, when Stephanie Sanchez takes over the role. Alfredo Daza plays Diego.
For two nights only on April 17 and 18, 2026, the Lyric will present a world premiere of a musical work by Chicago's first ever poet laureate, avery d. young. "safronia" is an Afro-surrealist story told from the perspective of the Booker family, who return from the Northern U.S. to their hometown in the South after five years of banishment to bury their family patriarch.
Opera in the Neighborhoods also returns for school and public performances in 2025-2026 with "Katie: The Strongest of the Strong," which tells the true story of circus strongwoman Katie Sandwina. She was known as the strongest woman in the world, but was also a wife and mother who helped lead the women's suffrage movement of the early 20th century. The production features an all-female cast.
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