Chicago Lyric faces strike
mainFrom Chicago Classical Review:
With just three days before Lyric Opera opens its season with Puccini’s La Boheme, the company is going down to the wire in its contract negotiations with musicians unions.
While rehearsals have been taking place as scheduled, the company has not yet come to an agreement with either the Lyric Opera Orchestra or the Lyric Opera Chorus, represented by the Chicago Federation of Musicians and AGMA, respectively. The current three-year contracts for each expired last month…
Read on here.
No strike tonight at the Lyric. The season opening went without a hitch: drum roll and Stars and Stripes and all. In Boheme, the chorus sang lustily, if not with immaculate precision, and the orchestra was not on strike either.
As a substantial donor I’m very disappointed in the artistic direction the current management has taken. They spend much attention of community engagement which is not advancing musical excellence and they are leaning towards “euro-trash” staging with emphasis on current fad social issues. So sad to have USA’s second opera company (and in some aspects the first) taken down the drain.