Monthly Archives: November 2021

LYRIC OPERA’S MAGIC FLUTE: SAD AND SOULLESS

Chicago’s first Magic Flute played on Tuesday evening, January 17, 1865. Carl Anschutz (1813-1870) conducted. In January 1864 Leonard Grover (1833-1926) brought to Chicago the first real German opera troupe for fifteen performances at the recently remodeled  McVicker’s Theater at Madison and Dearborn,  among them Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The city’s German population was very […]

BOB DYLAN CONCERT: A “GHOSTLY APPEARANCE”

Since  it opened its doors in 1889 Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre has heard the world’s  great voices, in words, in music, and in both. On Wednesday, the eighty year old  Nobel Prize-winning Bob Dylan offered an inspired  concert which placed him in that pantheon of voices. Dylan opened the concert with 1971’s “Watching the River Flow”, […]