WFMT will revive its locally produced series of live Sunday morning chamber music performances from the former Morse Theatre next month. The venue, newly renovated and renamed the Mayne Stage, re-opened July 4 with a performance by jazz chanteuse Ann Hampton Callaway.

The WFMT series,  Live from Mayne Stage, launches September 19 with a performance by Baroque Band. As with the earlier Live from the Morse series, the chamber music performances will be broadcast before a live audience.

The previous short-lived series presented concerts from October 2008 through spring of 2009 before a financial dispute between the theater’s owners and its financial backer shuttered the venue.

The one-hour concerts will air at 11 a.m. Sunday mornings from the theater, 1330 W. Morse Avenue in Rogers Park. The refurbished 1912 vaudeville house combines the intimacy and ambience of a classic nightclub with the high-tech broadcast capability of a digital recordng studio.

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine will be featured on October 3, and future artists include the Avalon String Quartet, Fifth House Ensemble, CUBE, and St. James Rush Hour Concerts.

The program host will be Dennis Moore, and Steve Robinson is executive producer. Gerald Fisher, Chicago Classical Review contributor, will serve as project coordinator. The series is sponsored by North Shore Retirement Hotel.

For more information and to buy tickets, go to www.maynestage.com.

The Lyric will open its 56th season October 1 with Verdi’s Macbeth starring Thomas Hampson in a new production directed by Barbara Gaines of Chicago Shakespeare Theater. The season will also offer Bizet’s Carmen, Puccini’s Girl of the Golden West, Wagner’s Lohengrin, Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Handel’s Hercules, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.

With the Lyric cutting its performances by 11 percent next season, getting single tickets for specific dates is no longer a sure bet, so best not to delay. www.lyricopera.org; 312-332-2244.

The Lyric Opera has also announced details of its free annual preseason concert, which takes place 7:30 p.m. September 11 at the Pritzker Pavilion and will be broadcast live on WFMT.

Artists include Thomas Hampson, Nadja Michael, Elaine Alvarez, Amber Wagner, Dimitri Pittas, and Kyle Ketelsen. The program wil include selections from Donizetti’s La favorita, Verdi’s Macbeth, Un ballo in maschera, Simon Boccanegra, and La forza del destino, Puccini’s La bohème and La rondine, and Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Don Giovanni, Cosὶ fan tutte, and Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

Donald Nally

Less than three weeks after general director Bill Mason announced his retirement, comes word that the Lyric Opera of Chicago is losing another key leadership role with the departure of Donald Nally.

Nally, chorus master of the Lyric since 2007, will leave the company next year at the end of the 2010-2011 season.

“I’m going to concentrate on my group in Philadelphia, said Nally of The Crossing, the choral ensemble that performs new music exclusively. “I really want to do more conducting and less preparing.”

The Lyric Opera Chorus has largely maintained the high reputation it has historically enjoyed, since Nally took the reins from Donald Palumbo three years ago. In a released statement by the company, Mason said Nally had done “an exceptional job” for Lyric and singled out his work in John Adams’ Doctor Atomic and Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust last season.

Nally said that his Lyric duties essentially amount to “eight months of preparation.” “All that time, I’m not conducting,” he said. “It’s a specific skill set and it’s one I’ve been doing for a long time. I’m going to turn 50 in December, and it’s a good time to re-evaluate.”

Nally said that the increasing acclaim and recordings of The Crossing, made him decide to concentrate more on his work in Philadelphia as well as in Cincinnati, where he also leads VAE, the Cincinnati Vocal Arts ensemble.

While he’s eager to spend more time on the podium and less in the rehearsal hall, Nally says he remains enthusiastic about his work in the Lyric Opera’s upcoming season, which will be last with the company. “I’ve never done a Lohengrin before, so this will be fun.”

The Lyric Opera will begin the search for a new chorus master immediately, said Mason.

Alondra de la Parra made her local debut leading the Chicago Sinfonietta in March. Photo: Abby Ross

Sources indicate that Alondra de la Parra is the leading candidate to become the next music director of the Chicago Sinfonietta. An announcement is expected early next month.

The 29-year-old Mexican conductor made an impressive Chicago debut in March leading the chamber orchestra in music of Beethoven, Marquez, and Piazzolla.

The past 1-1/2 years have amounted to an extended public audition process with guest conductors vying for the opportunity to succeed Paul Freeman, the orchestra’s founder and longtime music director. Other strong podium candidates who have led the Sinfonietta this season have been Mei-Ann Chen and John McLaughlin Williams.

If de la Parra gets the nod, she will bring undoubted energy and youthful charisma to the task, as well as the possibility of bringing new audiences to the diversity-conscious ensemble by building bridges to Chicago’s significant Mexican population.

A crucial issue is whether de la Parra has the experience and maturity—and will get the artistic authority—to make the personnel upgrades necessary to raise the perennially mediocre Sinfonietta to the next level.

Still, from a public relations standpoint, announcing a young female Mexican conductor as the Sinfonietta’s new leader at the midpoint of Mexico’s centennial and bicentennial celebration has obvious advantages.

William Mason

William Mason, general director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, will retire at the end of the  2011-2012 season, when his contract expires.

Mason, 68, has been with the company for more than four decades and has served as general director since 1997.

“I think two years from now will be the right time to turn the reins over to a new general director,” Mason said in a statement released by the company. “And I look forward to working with the Board on finding a successor to lead this great company.

“I am privileged to have spent my professional life doing what I love best, which is producing grand opera at the highest international level. I followed two exceptional general directors at Lyric: Carol Fox, who founded the company and established its artistic pedigree from day one, and Ardis Krainik, who continued that commitment to excellence while at the same time making Lyric a great civic institution and a model of fiscal responsibility.”

The Lyric Opera, like many arts institutions and classical performing organizations, has faced major challenges in the current economic era.  The company has operated in the black for 22 of the past 23 years,  and managed to break even last season but had to draw $2.7 million from its reserve fund to do so.

With a strike threatening opening night of the 2009-2010 season, Mason skillfully handled a tough contract negotiation with the Lyric Opera musicians union, getting the union to agree to significant concessions.

Still, there was a significant drop in subscriptions sales in 2008-2009, which Mason largely blamed on the recession. Next season due to decreased ticket sales, the Lyric is cutting its number of performances by 11% from 77 to 68.

Mason has served the Lyric as a gifted and adroit administrator and maintained the Lyric’s artistic reputation as one of the world’s leading opera houses. If there is one criticism to be made about his tenure, it’s that the Lyric Opera has become increasingly conservative in its repertoire in recent seasons, with Krainik’s commitment to American opera and staging new works put aside as the economy has stumbled.

Mason, a Chicago native, succeeded Krainik, who served as general director from 1981 until her death in 1997. He joined the Lyric administration in 1962 under Carol Fox, Lyric’s founding general manager.

Prior to his appointment as general director, Mason served as Lyric’s director of operations, artistic, and production for 16 years. He was production director from 1974 through 1978.

Photo: Ravinia Festival

Summer festivals aren’t exactly vacation time for the performers who provide the music for audiences relaxing under the stars.

But when James Conlon and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra launch their 2010 Ravinia season Monday night, they might feel a distinct sense of slowing down. Both have just finished herculean projects. The CSO’s Beethoven Festival June 2 to 20 was a much-heralded sendoff for beloved principal conductor Bernard Haitink that included all nine Beethoven symphonies. And since late May Conlon, music director of the Los Angeles Opera as well as Ravinia, has conducted three cycles of Wagner’s complete Ring of the Nibelung in Los Angeles. The city has never presented a fully integrated, four-opera Ring cycle before, and the buzz around the $31 million production had been fierce.

Like a smoker choosing to ease off rather than quit cold turkey, Conlon is bringing a bit of Los Angeles’ Wagner to Ravinia. On June 30 he leads the CSO in Ring excerpts including the Immolation Scene from Gotterdammerung and the final scene of Siegfried. Conlon’s Siegfried in Los Angeles, tenor John Treleaven, will share the stage with soprano Christine Brewer.

“This is my detoxification,’’ Conlon said with a laugh during a phone interview between Ring cycles earlier this month. “The world stops [when you’re doing a Ring]. I’m very happy I’m coming to Ravinia because I get so excited working with the Chicago Symphony. It’s probably the best place for me to be to get over it. I thought one more Ring program with the Chicago Symphony should help me cope. If it weren’t something as exciting as Ravinia, I would probably be in bad shape afterwards.”

Achim Freyer’s production of the Ring, with its futuristic design, was controversial, and ticket sales were not as high as Los Angeles Opera officials had hoped. But more than 100 Ring-related events were held throughout the city, and audiences gave the performances standing ovations.

“It’s a high point. It doesn’t come around often, if at all,’’ said Conlon who has conducted Ring cycles in Germany. “It’s an enormous satisfaction to have built a Ring from the bottom up over several years. And it’s also given me enormous satisfaction to see a city really come together like that. The support and the interest in the city have been unbelievable.”

Conlon arrived at the Los Angeles Opera in 2006 with the goal of doing a complete Ring. When he became Ravinia’s music director in 2005, he also had a set of goals. One was to present all of Mahler’s symphonies over a number of seasons. On July 13 he leads the CSO in the Adagio movement from Mahler’s unfinished Symphony No. 10.

“The Mahler cycle was of fundamental importance to me because of the equation: Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Gustav Mahler,” said Conlon. “They are the quintessential orchestra to be performing it. Knowing that 2011 [the 100th anniversary of Mahler’s death] would be inundated everywhere with Mahler, we decided to do it differently—to get an early start and the perspective that went from the beginning to the end in correct order. That’s what we succeeded in doing.

“Mahler has been a part of my life since, I think, 1973 when I conducted my first Mahler symphony,” he continued. “This is the third time I’ve done a complete cycle with the same orchestra. It’s just about as fabulous as doing the Ring.”

Conlon, who celebrated his 60th birthday in March, estimates that he has led between 330 and 350 performances of Mahler symphonies. Asked how his approach has changed over the years, he said, “It’s very difficult to answer that question because you evolve. It happens so gradually and organically. Hopefully, you do evolve. You either get better or worse; if you’re standing still, you’re getting worse.”

At Ravinia, in addition to performing Mahler symphonies, Conlon has also focused on a project titled Breaking the Silence. The aim is to present music by gifted but lesser-known composers such as Alexander Zemlinsky and Viktor Ullmann whose careers were cut short or seriously impacted by the Holocaust. This summer the project is represented by just a single performance, July 27 in Martin Theatre. Working with T. Daniel Productions, an innovative Chicago-based mime company, Conlon will lead a chamber ensemble in Darius Milhaud’s Le boeuf sur le toit (The Ox on the Roof). An antic dance and music piece from 1920, it was completed 20 years before Milhaud, who was Jewish, left his native France in the wake of the Nazis.

“We’ve had five seasons of a very strong presence,” said Conlon about Breaking the Silence. “It doesn’t have to be every year, but it does have to stay in everybody’s consciousness. This initiative will go on forever. At the end of my lifetime I won’t see the end of it. This has to be built gradually, over a generation.”

The CSO and a Beethoven cycle also will be part of Conlon’s Ravinia season this summer. The Chicago-based, Mexican-born pianist Jorge Federico Osorio will be the soloist in all five Beethoven piano concertos July 15 and 16 with the orchestra. Conlon wraps up his 2010 Ravinia season with a set of Mozart operas in the Martin Theatre with major soloists and a chamber-sized CSO. Cosi fan tutte with a cast including Frederica von Stade in her final opera performances in Chicago will be given Aug. 5 and 7. The Marriage of Figaro with Ildebrando D’Arcangelo and Nathan Gunn is scheduled Aug. 6 and 8.

“I’m delighted that the response was so positive,” said Conlon, referring to the pair of Mozart operas (Don Giovanni and The Abduction from the Seraglio) he conducted in the Martin Theatre in 2008, “and that everybody was willing to commit themselves to it again. There is no question that the Martin Theatre is ideal for the intimacy of those operas. It was very clear from the reaction both onstage and offstage that we should continue.”

Photo: Ravinia Festival

The CSO’s 21 Ravinia performances this summer are scattered among weekdays and weekends between June 28 and Aug. 15. Some devoted Ravinia fans remember the 1970s when gala CSO concerts launched each season or the 1990s when the CSO was the regular weekend-long attraction. For some of them, this season’s calendar is unsettling.

Welz Kauffman, Ravinia’s president and CEO, defends the schedule. The CSO regularly performed during the week for many of its seven-plus decades at Ravinia, he said. Stiff competition for an ever-dwindling number of big box-office draws is another consideration. Since some summer festivals such as Tanglewood cluster their orchestral concerts on the weekends, Kauffman considers Ravinia’s flexible CSO schedule a plus.

“When we had Bernard Haitink here a couple of years ago,’’ said Kauffman, “we could only get him on a Wednesday. (The CSO’s principal conductor made his belated Ravinia debut in 2008 with a memorable Mahler Sixth Symphony.) If Riccardo Muti ever decides to come back to Ravinia, which we would love and open our arms for, it could be 11 o’clock on a Sunday night and we’ll take it.”

Ravinia is celebrating Conlon’s 60th birthday this season, and he has seen massive changes on the music scene. Classical music has become a niche art, but Conlon actively fights the notion that it is only for a select few. Early in his career he hated the notion of conductors speaking to audiences. But now he gives a pre-opera talk every time he conducts in Los Angeles. Whenever he speaks from Ravinia’s podium, his comments are typically witty and graceful.

Conlon sees value in the video screens that Ravinia is using at every CSO concert. The idea is to give pavilion audiences a closer look at the performers and forge a closer connection between audience and orchestra. Some concertgoers loathe them, but Kauffman said the overall response has been positive.

“It was a big mistake,” said Conlon, “to have allowed classical music to fall out of public education, and we’re paying the price for it now. Anything that reverses this trend is a necessity.

“I can certainly understand the viewpoint of people who may not like those screens. But I think at this point in history, it’s outweighed by the necessity of winning people and keeping them, young people especially. People very much like seeing the orchestra.”

James Conlon will open the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s season at the Ravinia Festival 8 p.m. Monday with an all-Chopin program featuring Garrick Ohlsson in both of the composer’s piano concertos. www.ravinia.org; 847-266-5100.

William Jon Gray

Music of the Baroque announced Thursday that William Jon Gray has been named its new chorus director, effective with the opening of the 2010-2011 season in the fall.

Gray prepared the Music of the Baroque Chorus for the acclaimed performances of Mozart’s Requiem in February.

“Bill Gray has wide-ranging experience as a choral conductor as well as strong practical knowledge and a deep love of Music of the Baroque’s signature repertoire,” said executive director Karen Fishman. “We’re delighted that he is joining us as chorus director.”

Director of choral activities at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Gray conducts the school’s Pro Arte Singers and teaches choral conducting and the choral literature.

Gray will have much work to do in Music of the Baroque’s upcoming 40th aniversary season, with the chorus featured in several works including Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Handel’s Messiah and the complete Bach Christmas Oratorio.

Gray will also conduct the annual Holiday Brass and Choral Concerts in December.

Music of the Baroque’s season opens Sept. 26 with Jane Glover leading an all-Purcell program including Dido and Aeneas. www.baroque.org.

The Lyric balanced the budget by drawing $2.7 million from its Campaign for Excellence Fund, which was established in 2005.

Lyric’s operating expenses for the 2009-10 season were $53 million. The company sold 86% of its seating capacity for ticket revenue of $24.3 million, and the company raised more than $16.6 million in contributions.

In a statement released Monday night, general director William Mason said, the recession had “a significant and
lasting effect” especially in subscription sales, which dropped by 12 percent from 2008-2009.

William Mason, general director, Lyric Opera of Chicago

“While the company had its third-best year ever in individual-ticket sales, these results did not make up for the lower subscription level,” said Mason. “Fortunately, we are in a strong financial position. We were able to cover revenue shortfall with Campaign for Excellence funds, and members of our various Boards were particularly generous in this very difficult environment.”

Mason stated that controlling expenses and watching the bottom line were essential to maintaining the company’s artistic excellence. This has included reducing next season to 68 performances from 77  in 2009-2010.

The company also has instituted layoffs for the first time, as well as continuing to leave vacant positions unfilled. Also salaries have been frozen again next year and nonpaid furloughs have been instituted for all staff. Top administrative staff salaries have been reduced by 15% including Mason’s.

The Lyric has operated in the black for 22 of the past 23 years—a record among the country’s major not-for-profit music and performing-arts companies.

Mason reported that total operating expenses for fiscal year 2011 are projected at $52.4 million, with the fundraising goal increased to $17.2 million.

In other Lyric news, James L. Alexander, Vice-President of the Lyric Board of Directors, and Co-Trustee of The Elizabeth Morse Charitable Trust and The Elizabeth Morse received Lyric’s highest honor, the Carol Fox Award.

Lyric’s season opens on October 1 with a new production of Verdi’s Macbeth, starring Thomas Hampson and Nadja Michael. http://lyricopera.org

Philip Glass' Violin Concerto No. 2 will have its Chicago premiere next season at the Harris Theater.

The Harris Theater has made its intriguing 2010-2011 classical events even more attractive through discounted subscriptions, just extended through June 15.

The Harris Theater will present the Chicago premiere of Philip Glass’s new Violin Concerto No. 2, “The American Four Seasons,” performed by Robert McDuffie and the Venice Baroque Orchestra October 24. On November 6 Gidon Kremer will bring his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra to Chicago.

Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero comes to the Harris February 4, and tenor Ian Bostridge will perform with the Canadian early music ensemble Les Violons de Roy May 6.

Four-concert subscriptions are available ranging from $140-$225; prices go up June 15. Call 312-334-7777 or by visiting http://harristheaterchicago.org

At a time when many classical-music organizations across the country are cutting back on their events, Music of the Baroque will expand, offering eight programs and nineteen performances in the 2010-2011 season.

That said, the repertoire for Music of the Baroque’s anniversary season is on the conservative side, with music director Jane Glover and principal guest conductor Nicholas Kraemer leading a mix of Baroque and Classical works that includes Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Brandenburgs and popular symphonies of Haydn and Mozart.

The season will open September 26 with Glover leading performances of Dido and Aeneas with mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabo in an all-Purcell program that also offers the Ode to Saint Cecilia.

In December, Glover will lead MOB in the ensemble’s first performance in over two decades of Bach’s massive Christmas Oratorio, with soloists Paul Agnew, Lisa Saffer, Renata Pokupic and Sanford Sylvan.

Glover directs a Mozart and Haydn program in January that includes Haydn’s Symphonies Nos. 102 and 104, Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto with soloist William Buchman and, a genuine rarity, Leopold Mozart’s Trumpet Concerto with Barbara Butler as soloist.

In April, Glover will conduct her first-ever Music of the Baroque performances of Handel’s Messiah. The  starry lineup of soloists includes Elizabeth Futral, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, John McVeigh and Christopheren Nomura. MOB’s 40^th anniversary season closes in May with Glover leading an all-Mozart program featuring the composer’s final three symphonies.

Nicholas Kraemer will be on the podium in November for Vivaldi’s Gloria and Handel’s Dixit Dominus (soloists to be announced), as well as a March program spotlighting three of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. Podium duties for MOB’s popular Christmas concerts have yet to be determined.

Subscription packages for the 2010-2011 season are on sale now at the Music of the Baroque box office, 312-551-1414. Renewing subscribers can also order online at http://www.baroque.org/. Single tickets will go on sale August 1.