CHICAGO (5/20/2025) — Four world-class opera artists — soprano Sydney Mancasola, mezzo-soprano Zoie Reams, tenor Dominick Valdés Chenes, and baritone Edward Parks — will join creative visionary and rock legend, Billy Corgan and the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus for one of the most anticipated events on the fall cultural calendar: A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness, on stage at Lyric Opera of Chicago for seven performances only, November 21–30, 2025. A limited number of tickets are still available and are on sale now.
These world-premiere performances, produced by Lyric in partnership with Corgan, celebrate the 30th anniversary of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the era-defining album from Corgan’s band The Smashing Pumpkins. The four vocalists will perform with Corgan on newly commissioned arrangements and orchestrations — by Corgan and James Lowe, who also conducts — of many of the album’s seminal songs, powered by the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus. The concerts will harness all of Lyric’s technical and artistic forces, including costume design by House of Gilles by Gilles Mendel and Chloé Mendel Corgan, for an immersive sonic and visual experience that blurs the boundaries of opera, rock, and performance art.
Soprano Sydney Mancasola made her Lyric debut in the 2024/25 Season as Marzelline in Beethoven’s Fidelio. Her notable recent appearances include Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at Opéra National de Paris, Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera, and Bess in a new production of Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Breaking the Waves at the Adelaide Festival Centre in Australia and the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland, a role she has also performed at LA Opera. She made her European debut with Komische Oper Berlin as the heroines in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann.
Mezzo-soprano Zoie Reams, a native of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, has become a Lyric favorite in recent seasons. She performed two roles in the 2024/25 Season: the Mother in the Mother in Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s Blue and Maddalena in Verdi’s Rigoletto. She has also appeared as the Sibyl and Chief’s Daughter #2 in the world premiere of Proximity and as Ragonde in Rossini’s Le Comte Ory in the 2022/23 Season, following her debut as Flora in Verdi’s La traviata in the 2018/19 Season. Also in the 2024/25 Season, she appeared with the LA Phil as part of the Eldorado Ballroom series curated by Solange Knowles for Saint Heron, singing Julia Perry’s Stabat Mater, with an additional performance this summer in Houston. In the 2025/26 Season, she returns to Lyric as Neris in the season-opening production of Cherubini’s Medea, to Canadian Opera Company as Maddalena, and to the LA Phil as Siegrune in Act III of Wagner’s Die Walküre under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel.
Tenor Dominick Valdés Chenes makes his Lyric debut with these performances. He recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut in the leading role of Greenhorn in Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s Moby-Dick. His other engagements in the 2024/25 Season include his house debut as Pollione in Bellini’s Norma for Oper Leipzig, Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca with New Orleans Opera, Turiddu in Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana with Opera Orlando, and Erik in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer with Oper im Steinbruch in Austria. In the 2025/26 Season, he sings the role of Solano in Delius’s The Magic Fountain at the Wexford Festival in Ireland.
Baritone Edward Parks, a resident of Highland Park, last appeared at Lyric as Valentin in Gounod’s Faust in the 2017/18 Season. In addition to performing the leading baritone roles in the classic repertory, Parks is noted for his interpretations of new works, including Steve Jobs in the world premiere of Mason Bates and Mark Cambell’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs at Santa Fe Opera, The Creature in the world premiere of Gregg Kallor’s Frankenstein at Arizona Opera, and the role of Jack Torrance in Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell’s The Shining at Opera Colorado and Lyric Opera of Kansas City. He has also performed in several worldwide stadium tours alongside superstar tenor Andrea Bocelli. A national winner of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, Parks trained at the Met’s Lindemann Young Artists Development Program and was also awarded third prize in the Operalia Competition.
Grammy-nominated conductor, arranger, orchestrator, and composer James Lowe made his Lyric debut conducting performances of Oklahoma! in the 2012/13 Season and returned to conduct West Side Story in the 2018/19 and 2022/23 Seasons. He appears regularly with major opera houses in the United States and abroad, as well as on Broadway. He recently arranged, orchestrated, and conducted Songbird, a new adaptation of Offenbach’s La Périchole in the style of 1920’s New Orleans jazz for The Glimmerglass Festival, Washington National Opera, and Milwaukee's Florentine Opera. On Broadway, he was the music director and conductor of the recent revival of Les Misérables, as well as the Tony Award-winning revival of Anything Goes starring Sutton Foster and Joel Grey. He made his Broadway debut conducting performances of Gypsy starring Patti LuPone. He has appeared in concert with Sir Elton John, conducting his own orchestrations and choral arrangements of Elton’s classic songs, as well as with singer-songwriter Randy Newman and the legendary Booker T. Jones. He has played in several rock, jazz, blues, and country bands and was the keyboardist, rhythm guitarist, lead singer, and songwriter for the rock band Backwash for five years.
Performance dates for A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness are November 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 29, and 30. Remaining tickets are on sale now; the best availability is on Wednesday, November 26 and Sunday, November 30. All performances begin at 7:30 p.m. at Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive, Chicago.
Tickets for A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness are available at lyricopera.org/melloncollie.
