Get to know: Cherubini's "Medea"

Kicking off Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 71st season is Luigi Cherubini’s Medea, a searing tale of vengeance and betrayal scored with raw emotional intensity. The composer transferred Euripides' ancient tale of a sorceress scorned into a riveting opera, with music and themes that continue to resonate across the millennia. Lyric presents Medea for the first time in its seven-decade history.

Medea helps her lover, Giasone, steal the golden fleece, and when she learns that Giasone is to marry King Creonte's daughter, she pleads with him to reconsider. He repays her with cruel disregard. Fearing what the formidable sorceress might unleash, the king banishes her, granting her just a single day to say goodbye to the children she shares with Giasone. Burning with vengeance, Medea unleashes a sequence of terror that defines the very essence of Greek tragedy.

This Lyric co-production (with the Metropolitan Opera, Greek National Opera, and Canadian Opera Company) premiered at the Metropolitan Opera during the 2022/23 Season, with lauded soprano Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role. She’ll reprise her powerful performance here at Lyric, now her home company, as will Ryan Opera Center alumnus and world-renowned tenor Matthew Polenzani in the role of Giasone. Directed by the acclaimed Sir David McVicar and conducted by Lyric’s own Enrique Mazzola, this production will ensure audiences remember that Hell hath no fury like a sorceress scorned. 

Considered by Beethoven to be the greatest living composer of his time, Maria Luigi Carlo Zenobio Salvatore Cherubini was born into a family of musicians in Florence in late 1760. A musical prodigy, he began to compose at the age of six and had completed several formal religious works by the time he was thirteen. By the late 1780s, he had settled in Paris, where he enjoyed the patronage of Marie Antoinette. Following the success of Lodoïska (1791) and Elisa (1794), Cherubini wrote Médée (1797), inspired by Euripides’ ancient tale and Pierre Corneille’s 1635 play of the same name. Premiering in Paris in March of that year, Médée met with a lukewarm reception from audiences. All audiences, that is, except for Beethoven, who kept a personal copy of the score and later cited Cherubini as one of his greatest influences.

In 1909, the work was translated into its modern Italian version, now called Medea. It wasn’t until Maria Callas took the Florentine stage in 1953 that both Callas and Medea would be truly catapulted into the modern operatic pantheon.

Sir David McVicar has directed six productions at Lyric since 2006. His set for this Medea has been described by the New York Times as being “dominated by the crumbling brick walls of Corinth, their gates here massive, tarnished gilt doors. When those slide open, a huge mirror looms at an angle over the playing space beyond, giving the audience a vivid, disorienting bird’s-eye view of the characters.” 

From sweeping music and unrelenting drama, to fearless performances and fantastical scenery, Medea is more than just the beginning of the season — it’s a blazing invocation, daring audiences to look into the abyss of love betrayed and witness the searing fire that follows.