Chicago Opera Theater presents He/She at Harris Theater

Six months after the Lyric publicly announced that general director William Mason will step down in 2012, Chicago Opera Theater’s general director, Brian Dickie, revealed he’ll be leaving the enterprising opera company to return to his native England. “All things come to an end, I suppose,” the 70-year-old reflects cheerfully over the phone.

General director of COT since 1999, Dickie repositioned the company as the city’s strongest alternative to Lyric while targeting a younger crowd with socializing initiatives such as Beers and Baritones and by establishing the dynamic Harris Theater as its trendy stomping ground. If Lyric is the father presiding over the family dinner, COT is the fun uncle who’s not afraid to cross the line after a few too many brandy sours. “We cater to people who are interested in discovering new things, rather than to the public that is happy with The Barber of Seville and La bohème,” Dickie, an avid blogger, says with a posh chuckle.

That visionary approach is certainly present in this year’s Spring Festival Season programming. After creating a stir with Tod Machover’s forward-thinking robot opera, Death and the Powers, and staging the second installment of the ongoing Medea trilogy, COT swings the spotlight to HE/SHE. The final show of the season is no opera, rather an intriguing pairing of song cycles about obsessive love, examined from the perspectives of both genders in Robert Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben and Leos Janacek’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared.

“We’re doing something that, as far as I know, has never been done before,” Dickie declares. “We’re inventing another new art form, a new way of presenting this kind of work.”

HE/SHE features just three cast members—tenor Joseph Kaiser and mezzo-sopranos Jennifer Johnson Cano and Brandy Lynn Hawkins—and pianist Craig Terry. Filmmaker, animator and designer Hillary Leben has created dazzling visuals to be projected throughout the performance, including elegant hand-painted supertitles.

“What the audience sees on the screen varies a lot,” Leben says. “Sometimes we show what the character is thinking, or it might reflect the environment they are in.” For Frauenliebe und Leben, the Rogers Park resident used delicate daguerreotypes. “Schumann was one of the first composers to be photographed, which is what gave us that idea,” she explains. The work of Russian artist Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, one of the first photographers to experiment with color, provided inspiration for The Diary of One Who Disappeared. “The Janacek piece is a big party after Schumann,” Leben says. “It’s abstract and aggressive. The surreal colors are fitting for the piece as the character kind of has this nightmare version of the world because he’s so tortured by his lust.”

“We wanted to do something that wouldn’t cost a significantly huge amount of money,” says Dickie. “It’s always been my belief that the study of song is of enormous importance to singers. Song cycles are mini dramas, you know? With a bit of luck, people will be completely emotionally exhausted by the end.”

These bare-bones song cycles replace the previously planned Moscow, Cheryomushki, Shostakovich’s satirical Soviet operetta, which has been postponed until next season due to budget restraints. The tightening of COT’s purse strings, however, does not appear to be the impetus behind Dickie’s departure. He and his wife are yearning to be near their three grown children and nine grandchildren. “I’ve got so many grandkids, it’s nuts!” The Dickies also wish to educate their 7-year-old “bonus” daughter, Bea, in the British school system.

Chicago Opera Theater presents HE/SHE at Harris Theater Saturday 7 and Sunday 8.