CHICAGO (8/11/2026) — Lyric Opera of Chicago opens its 72nd Season with one of opera’s most enduring and electrifying works: Mozart’s Don Giovanni, October 10 – November 1, 2026. In the title role of this thrilling fable of deceit, desire, and spectacular damnation is bass-baritone Christian Van Horn, a distinguished alumnus of Lyric’s renowned artist-training program, The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center. Lyric Music Director Enrique Mazzola leads the Lyric Opera Orchestra in a production directed by Chicago theater legend Robert Falls. The October 18 matinee marks a historic milestone in opera accessibility, as Lyric becomes the first major American opera company to present live American Sign Language interpretation of a foreign-language opera.
The path to damnation never sounded so sweet. In Don Giovanni, widely regarded as one of the greatest operas ever composed, Mozart weaves the tale of the infamous lothario Don Juan into a comically light-hearted yet deadly serious musical masterpiece. With more than two thousand seductions behind him — a tally his long-suffering manservant Leporello recites with relish in the famous Catalogue Aria — the Don becomes increasingly reckless as he descends into excess and immorality. He murders the father of Donna Anna, one of his discarded conquests, eludes every trap set for him by her vengeful fiancé Don Ottavio, and seduces a bride, Zerlina, on her wedding day, to the fury of her jealous groom, Masetto. But when his antics turn fatal and unrepentant, the women he has wronged join forces to seek revenge, and the dead come calling. His eventual fate — dragged to hell by the marble statue of the man he murdered — is one of the most spine-tingling scenes in all of opera.
The score contains some of Mozart’s most indelible music — the seductive duet "Là ci darem la mano," the hedonistic rush of the Champagne Aria, the eerie grandeur of the Commendatore’s return from the dead, and Donna Elvira’s scalding "Mi tradi quell’alma ingrata." The legendary opera has cast a spell over history’s greatest minds — including Søren Kierkegaard, George Bernard Shaw, and E.T.A. Hoffmann — and it has also achieved a measure of pop-culture fame: even Hannibal Lecter was a fan. In the Academy Award–winning film Amadeus (coming to Lyric in January with live music by the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus), the character of Mozart conducts the opera’s devastating finale.
Don Giovanni holds a singular place in Lyric’s history, as the very first opera the company ever presented in 1954. More than seven decades later, it opens a new chapter — the 2026/27 Season — with the same fearless artistic ambition that has defined Lyric since its founding.
A stellar ensemble of returning favorites and exciting debuts. American bass-baritone Christian Van Horn, who stars in the iconic title role, has built a distinguished career by stepping into the shoes of the art form’s greatest villains and anti-heroes. Hailed by The New York Times as "a bass-baritone of uncommon agility and power," and celebrated with a proclamation that "long may he reign in hell," Van Horn has amassed more than 100 performances each at Lyric, the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, and the Bavarian State Opera. An alumnus of Lyric’s Ryan Opera Center, he is the winner of the 2018 Richard Tucker Award. With Don Giovanni, Van Horn returns to the stage where his career began, fresh from a season of triumphant performances across the globe, and anticipating the release of his self-titled debut solo album later this season. His engaging, wry, and unfiltered commentary on the life of a jetsetting opera singer can be heard on The CVH Podcast.
Iowa-born bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen assumes the title role for the final two performances, October 30 and November 1. Ketelsen is no stranger to Don Giovanni at Lyric: he sang the role of Masetto in the 2004/05 Season and appeared as Leporello in this production’s premiere in the 2014/15 Season. His most recent Lyric appearance was Howard in the company premiere of Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s The Listeners in the 2024/25 Season. His 2025/26 Season included the title role in Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera, Jochanaan in Richard Strauss’s Salome at the Hamburg State Opera, and Orest in that composer’s Elektra at San Francisco Opera. Later in the 2026/27 Season, he returns to Lyric in the dual roles of Johnson and Owen in the company premiere of Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels’s Omar.
Armenian soprano Mané Galoyan returns to Lyric as Donna Anna, daughter of the murdered Commendatore, following her acclaimed Lyric debut in the 2024/25 Season as Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto. Winner of the Second Prize, Zarzuela Prize, and Rolex Audience Prize at the 2021 Operalia competition, she has been praised for her compelling presence and natural expressivity. Her 2025/26 Season engagements included the Metropolitan Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Atlanta Opera, and she will portray another Mozart heroine, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, at Santa Fe Opera in the summer of 2027.
Russian soprano Nina Solodovnikova makes her Lyric and role debut as Donna Elvira, one of Don Giovanni’s discarded lovers. She is a member of the Deutsche Oper Berlin ensemble, where she has performed Mozart’s Pamina, Verdi’s Violetta and Gilda, and Bizet’s Micaëla, among other roles. Winner of a Special Prize at the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, she brings a voice critics have praised as richly colored and dramatically alive to one of Mozart’s most psychologically complex heroines.
American tenor Lawrence Brownlee returns to Lyric as Don Ottavio, Donna Anna’s steadfast fiancé. A Lyric favorite since the 2015/16 Season, when he starred as Don Ramiro in Rossini’s La Cenerentola, he has appeared with the company in Rossini’s Le Comte Ory and Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment, among other acclaimed performances. His 2023 Grammy-nominated recording Rising, an album that pairs poetry from the Harlem Renaissance with original music commissioned from Black composers, was named one of the best classical albums of the year by The New York Times; Brownlee and soprano Erin Morley, who will appear at Lyric this season in Haydn’s The Creation and Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, recently released the duets album Golden Age on Pentatone.
Italian bass-baritone Tommaso Barea makes his Lyric debut as Leporello, Don Giovanni’s long-suffering manservant — a role he recently performed at the Metropolitan Opera and at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. Barea has performed at La Fenice, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Opéra national de Paris, among other leading houses, and has been praised for bringing both comic timing and genuine pathos to one of Mozart’s richest character roles.
Russian-Lebanese soprano Anna El-Khashem makes her Lyric debut as Zerlina, a young bride whom Don Giovanni attempts to seduce on her own wedding day. Named "Emerging Opera Singer of the Year" by Opernwelt magazine in 2018 and first-prize winner of the prestigious Neue Stimmen competition in 2019, El-Khashem has sung Zerlina at the Opéra national de Paris, the Verbier Festival, and the Salzburg Festival, and has also performed at the Zurich Opera House and Dutch National Opera.
American bass-baritone Christopher Humbert, Jr., a recent alumnus of Lyric’s Ryan Opera Center, appears as Masetto, Zerlina’s jealous bridegroom. The Ohio native made his Lyric debut in the 2024/25 Season as Count Ceprano in Verdi’s Rigoletto and also appeared that season in Beethoven’s Fidelio and Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s Blue. He is a recent recipient of the Shoshana Foundation's Richard F. Gold Career Grant.
American bass David Leigh makes his Lyric debut as the Commendatore, Donna Anna’s father, whose murder sets the opera’s tragedy in motion and whose statue ultimately drags Don Giovanni to damnation. Leigh has sung the role widely, including at the Canadian Opera Company, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and Detroit Opera. A graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, his 2025/26 Season included debut engagements at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Opéra de Lyon, and Hamburg State Opera; he also toured as the bass soloist in Verdi’s Requiem to Paris, Munich, Hamburg, and Vienna.
A unified vision leading the orchestral and choral ensembles. Lyric Music Director Enrique Mazzola brings his deep knowledge of Mozart’s operatic writing to Don Giovanni. With this production, Mazzola leads the Lyric Opera Orchestra in concluding Lyric’s multi-season exploration of the three operas Mozart composed with legendary librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, a cycle that began with The Marriage of Figaro in the 2024/25 Season and continued with Così fan tutte in the 2025/26 Season, which Maestro Mazzola conducted to great acclaim. Since his appointment as Lyric’s Music Director in 2021, Mazzola has reshaped the company’s artistic identity with interpretive authority and an infectious range across the repertoire.
Beyond his work in Chicago, Maestro Mazzola continues an active international schedule. During the summer, he led the Tokyo Philharmonic in a landmark 100th-performance run of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the New National Theatre, deepening a relationship with Japan that dates back to a 1981 tour with La Scala’s children's chorus. He made his debut at the Berlin State Opera conducting a new production of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, starring Anna Netrebko, Charles Castronovo, and Amartuvshin Enkhbat, who will reunite with Maestro later this season at Lyric in Verdi’s La traviata. Most recently, Maestro Mazzola made his debut at the Palais Garnier with the Opéra national de Paris, conducting a sold-out run of Rossini’s La Cenerentola with Don Giovanni co-star Lawrence Brownlee. These engagements reflect Maestro’s continued standing on the world's leading opera stages even as Chicago remains his home base.
The Lyric Opera Chorus is led by Chorus Director Michael Black. The chorus in Don Giovanni serves as the moral compass and social fabric of Seville, shifting dynamically from portraying lively, festive peasants to the terrifying agents of damnation. Their dramatic presence grounds the title character's supernatural downfall in the stark, terrifying realities of divine justice.
A theatrical titan returns to Lyric. Hailed as "Chicago’s most essential director" by the Chicago Tribune, Tony Award winner Robert Falls made his operatic debut at Lyric in the 1993/94 Season with Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, starring Renée Fleming and Samuel Ramey; returned to direct Menotti’s The Consul in the 1996/97 Season; and directed this production of Don Giovanni at its premiere in the 2014/15 Season and its revival in the 2019/20 Season. Falls served as Artistic Director of Chicago’s Goodman Theatre for more than 35 years. His four-decade career spans groundbreaking new plays, reimagined classics, and large-scale musical and operatic works. He won the 1999 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for his Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. He recently directed a celebrated production of Peter Shaffer’s Tony Award-winning play about Mozart, Amadeus, at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.
The artisans behind the curtain. Falls’s production is brought to vivid life by a creative team of frequent Lyric collaborators: set designer Walt Spangler, costume designer Ana Kuzmanic, lighting designer Duane Schuler, and choreographer August Tye. Together, they conjure a richly atmospheric world of shadow and seduction, where every visual detail reinforces the opera’s collision of comedy and damnation.
Mozart without barriers: a historic first in opera accessibility. Lyric Opera of Chicago launches its most ambitious accessibility initiative yet: At the Sunday, October 18 matinee of Don Giovanni, the company will present its first-ever live American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation of a foreign-language opera, a historic milestone for a major American opera company. Gifted ASL interpreters Crom Saunders (Certified Deaf Interpreter) and Veramarie Baldoza will translate the performance live, rendering Da Ponte's masterpiece of a libretto in vivid physical and emotional detail for Deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences in an entirely new way.
"Don Giovanni gives us a chance to showcase the extraordinary artistry of this company — not only our singers, orchestra members, and the artisans who bring the sets, costumes, and lighting to life, but also the expertise of our ASL interpreters who bring the music and drama to life in an entirely new means of expression," says Lyric General Director John Mangum. "Being the first major American opera company to offer live ASL interpretation of a foreign-language opera is a milestone we’re proud of, but it’s really just the latest step in work Lyric is always doing to evolve how we welcome audiences into the opera house. Accessibility isn’t a single initiative for us — it’s an ongoing commitment. Everyone should be able to experience the power of this art form, and we’ll keep finding new ways to make that happen."
In addition to the live ASL interpretation, Lyric invites all patrons to engage with the performance through:
- Touch tour at 12:00 noon — A guided pre-performance touch tour, developed for patrons who are blind or have low vision but open to all ticket holders, offering hands-on access to costumes, props, musical instruments, and the stage environment. No RSVP required.
- Audio description — A favorite of Chicago audiences, audio describer Martin Wilde gives concise narration of scenes, settings, costumes, and action, delivered through headphones or via Auracast (see below) for patrons who are blind or have low vision.
- SoundShirts — This innovative wearable technology uses touch sensation to allow wearers to feel the music in real time on their upper body, in sync with the orchestra and singers.
Throughout the entire run of Don Giovanni and for the new season that follows, Lyric is introducing new Auracast assistive listening technology — a significant upgrade delivering clearer, more reliable audio directly to compatible hearing devices, and the latest innovation in Lyric's ongoing commitment to making the opera experience more accessible. Built on Bluetooth Low Energy audio, Auracast broadcasts sound directly from the stage and orchestra pit to compatible hearing aids, cochlear implants, and earbuds like JBL Tour Pro 3, rather than relying on a receiver to pick up sound from across the room. This eliminates much of the background noise and interference common with older assistive listening systems, delivering a cleaner, more natural signal right to the listener's ear.
Many newer Android smartphones now support Auracast natively, allowing patrons to connect the way they'd join a Wi-Fi network, selecting Lyric’s audio stream directly from their phone; iPhone users can access the same broadcast through Auracast-enabled hearing aids or headphones paired via a manufacturer’s app, since Apple has not yet added native Auracast support to iOS.
In addition to providing Auracast, Lyric will continue to offer loaner assistive listening devices at no charge for patrons who prefer them or whose devices are not yet Auracast-compatible. These devices, along with Braille and large-print programs, high-powered opera glasses, and booster seats will continue to be available from the theater's Steiner Parquet (main floor) coat checks at all performances. Neckloops are available for those with t-coil enabled hearing instruments.
For more information on Lyric’s accessibility services, visit lyricopera.org/accessibility or call Audience Services at 312.827.5600.
A reckoning for everyone. Mozart's Don Giovanni has never been this magnetic — or this welcoming. As Christian Van Horn’s Don Giovanni charges headlong toward his fiery reckoning, Lyric opens its 72nd Season determined to bring his story vividly to life in the opera house. Two thousand seductions, one unrepentant sinner, and a company more committed than ever to making sure every audience member can experience it — Don Giovanni marks a season-opening night unlike any other in Lyric's history.
Performance dates: Eight chances to experience Don Giovanni:
- Saturday, October 10 at 7:30 p.m.
- Tuesday, October 13 at 7:00 p.m.
- Thursday, October 15 at 7:00 p.m.
- Sunday, October 18 at 2:00 p.m. — Touch tour at 12:00 noon; live ASL interpretation and audio description of the pre-opera talk and the performance; and SoundShirts
- Wednesday, October 21 at 2:00 p.m.
- Saturday, October 24 at 7:30 p.m.
- Friday, October 30 at 7:00 p.m. — Kyle Ketelsen as Don Giovanni
- Sunday, November 1 at 2:00 p.m. — Kyle Ketelsen as Don Giovanni
Language: Sung in Italian with easy-to-follow projected English titles above the stage.
Running time: Approximately 3 hours and 25 minutes, including one intermission.
Pre-performance talks: Ticketholders are invited to a free pre-opera talk by noted opera scholar Elinor Olin on Don Giovanni’s composition history and dramatic context; the talks begin one hour before each performance in the theater’s Steiner Parquet (the main floor).
Special events: Opera Insights — Moderated by Elinor Olin on Monday, September 21. Reception at 6:00 p.m., program at 7:00 p.m. Instituto Cervantes, 31 W. Ohio Street.
Artist Talkback — Join us immediately after the performance on Sunday, October 18, for a discussion with the artists from Don Giovanni. Deepen your experience of this thrilling production by hearing how they brought this compelling story to life — and explore each artist's personal connection to the opera.
Production history: Robert Falls’s production of Don Giovanni was first seen at Lyric Opera of Chicago in the 2014/15 Season and was last presented in the 2019/20 Season.
Location: Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive, Chicago, Illinois.
For more information and tickets, visit lyricopera.org/giovanni or call 312.827.5600.
