A Gift for All

David W. and Orit K. Carpenter were a familiar pair at the Lyric Opera House, for many years — first as a courting couple near the start of the century and then, after their marriage in 2004, sharing
opera with friends and family. David, a partner at the Sidley Austin law firm, joined Lyric’s Board in 2000 and brought his colleagues into the opera fold as production sponsors. David and Orit sponsored ambitious undertakings like The Passenger by
Mieczyslaw Weinberg (2014/15) and Berlioz’s The Trojans, an enormous epic the company produced for the first time in the 2016/17 Season.

Once, when the orchestra extended an invitation to board members to join them in the pit, David and Orit were the first to raise their hands. They ended up sitting among the players for a performance of West Side Story.

David sadly died from pancreatic cancer in 2022, but the couple’s indelible gifts to Lyric have continued, under Orit’s guidance. Their latest contribution is both extraordinarily lovely and extraordinarily useful: Making its debut with Wagner: Myth and Music, The David W. and Orit K. Carpenter Concert Shell will not only enhance the Lyric experience for everyone in the concert hall, but also provide a particularly fitting memorial.

“David was very knowledgeable about opera, and he particularly liked newer, more obscure productions,” notes Orit, currently a Lyric Board member. “He enjoyed unusual works — not just the crowd-pleasers — and we always supported that kind of opera. In the 2023/24 Season, I sponsored Fire Shut Up in My Bones and Jenůfa in his honor. We always knew our future sponsorship
opportunities would be guided toward performances
outside the mainstream.”

The 2026/27 Season presents three such chances: the Wagner program, Haydn’s The Creation, and a concert presentation of Massenet’s Hérodiade — powerful, large-scale work particularly well-suited for Lyric’s orchestra and chorus. The shell will almost literally amplify their talents.

“I’ve spoken with [Lyric Music Director] Maestro Mazzola about Hérodiade,” Orit says. “He loves Massenet, and he loves that piece, and I know he’s very excited about the shell project. It’s been wonderful to hear that enthusiasm from many areas of the company. [Lyric General Director] John Mangum told me that when the orchestra and chorus play on stage, a lot of the sound goes
up and disappears, and that has sometimes created
challenges. The shell will make a big difference.
It’s very fulfilling to be part of improving that aspect
of everyone’s experience.”

When deployed at full size, the David W. and Orit K. Carpenter Concert Shell weighs a little more than 65,000 pounds — which is to say, something close to five or six elephants. Its “ceiling” soars about 30 feet above the Lyric stage. Its slightly raised floor goes 65 feet wide, and 45 feet deep, providing plenty of room for the full Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus to be nestled inside the luminous vessel. It is a big gift, in every imaginable sense.

The wood-and-aluminum shell essentially creates a five-sided acoustic chamber on Lyric’s main stage, its Art Deco-influenced design dovetailing with the opera house’s style while its structure focuses and enhances the sound of musicians playing and singing onstage. The benefit runs at least two ways: performers and their conductor will be able hear each other better, and audiences will better experience both the power and the subtleties of the music.

Original drawings for the shell were done by renowned British designer Robert Innes Hopkins, whose name will be familiar to Lyric audiences. A frequent designer for the Royal Shakespeare
Company, at Lyric he most recently provided set design for Rigoletto (2024/25) — and, before that, for Lyric’s newest Ring cycle, which will rise again in the 2029/30 Season. In collaboration with Lyric’s technical department and the company’s acoustical
consultant, Hopkins polished the concept, resulting in a tool of unusual adaptability.

“Almost anytime the orchestra has been up on the stage, we have wanted it to be in some sort of enclosure — to have hard surfaces in place to reflect the sound out of our gargantuan space,” says Scott Wolfson, Lyric’s Technical Director. “This new shell achieves that. Our other goal was to make sure it had some flexibility
based on the required size of the orchestra — to allow
the created space to kind of breathe.”
In future productions, the shell will also allow for
enhanced visuals. The Creation, for instance, relays
the biblical origin story with vivid descriptions of the
wonders of the earth and the heavens, and is often
accompanied by imagery. Designers are already
working on a fresh presentation for Lyric — one of
many such opportunities on the horizon.
Another major benefit comes as a result of the
remarkable efficiency of the shell’s modular design. The
entire structure can be condensed to a size appropriate
for even a small recital. “It’s repeatable and practical,”
Wolfson notes. “We can build the back wall in 90
minutes and add the side walls wherever we need to in
a pretty short amount of time.” Lyric can conceivably
put on a full-scale grand opera, and smaller-scale work
like the Mozart Requiem, on the same weekend.
The shell was built at Bay Productions in Cardiff,
Wales, a frequent supplier to the company who created
the stunning sets for Elektra (2018/19), much of the
forthcoming Ring cycle, Macbeth (2021/22), and the
Don Giovanni that opened this season. “The shell is a
bit of a departure because it’s more architectural, but
we have great trust in them,” Wolfson says. “We knew
that they could do clean and crisp, and make something
strong and sturdy to last a lifetime.” With its vertical
lines, made of maple and birch, the shell also has
elegance.

Strength and flexibility, precision and detail: David undoubtedly would have appreciated those qualities. A year before he joined the Board, he had begun an intense study of Iyengar yoga. He eventually was certified to teach the form. Between his duties as a partner at Sidley Austin, and Orit’s as a clinical psychologist, the two traveled the world, often doing yoga together.

And there was always Lyric. David served on the Board Activities and Engagement Committee, the Development Committee, and the Production Sponsorship Committee. It was there that he formed the idea to create a “consortium” of partners at his firm to join their resources to sponsor particular operas — what one Lyric executive later called “an ingenious way … to help others deepen their relationship with opera.” Orit used her clinical knowledge to develop a program she calls Performance Psychology, which teaches mental skills addressing the unique challenges of opera singing. Both of them loved visiting with and congratulating conductors, directors, and singers at opening night celebrations.

Since David has been gone, the couple’s sponsorships have been denoted as being “in loving memory,” a fitting phrase for a legacy that continues with the enduring enhancement of the concert shell. “He was a remarkable person,” Orit says simply. “And I know he would be pleased with the new shell. It’s just gorgeous.”