Lyric wants opera for everyone

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Star soprano Renee Fleming and Lyric artistic director Andrew Davis are the faces of an ad campaign to attract new audiences. | Richard A. Chapman~Sun-Times

Updated: November 26, 2011 12:28AM

When Lyric Opera of Chicago announced in December that the world’s starriest diva would be joining its artistic team as creative consultant, the company emphasized that this was to be the “Renee Fleming Initiative.”

A few months later, when Anthony Freud was un­veiled as Lyric’s general director designate, there was talk of a new era now that the 57-year-old company had recruited its first-ever leader from outside the Civic Opera House.

In the first in a set of moves that flesh out the meaning of “new era,” it’s clear that Lyric’s donors have put their money where their hopes are.

On Thursday, Lyric is revealing plans to attract ticket buyers and subscribers by going after folks who’ve been uncertain whether opera is for them — this means you! An ad campaign, which launches Saturday, promotes the passionate nature of opera and live performance. You know, sex and violence and all that.

Downtown Chicago Partners, a local ad shop known for its sassy, youthful work for Walgreens, Northern Trust and the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau (“Chicago: Second to None”), created the campaign, which will feature ads on billboards and bus shelters, in newspapers and magazines and on digital platforms.

The five-month campaign plans to “debunk some of the stereotypes about our art form,” Fleming said, “and encourages people to experience opera for themselves.”

Along with the ad campaign, Lyric will unveil details Monday of a new high school vocal training partnership with the Merit School of Music, a West Loop combination of community music school and star factory. Lyric also has hired a leading and often refreshingly hip New York public relations firm, 21C Media Group, to handle national and international publicity.

While many classical art forms and ventures have been working hard to find new audiences, opera in general and Lyric in particular have made a stronger case that they have the theatricality, storytelling and flash that can attract the video and computer generations as well. Still, there’s much more work to be done.

While the marketing approach might be new, the art form is still classic, said Jim Schmidt, co-founder and creative partner of Downtown Partners . “We’re targeting attitudes more than demographics,” he said. “The campaign reaches out to many audiences — lifelong learners, people who are curious about culture, who participate in the arts and who are music enthusiasts.”

Money for the three initiatives comes from the Fleming sponsorship. “Lyric is extremely fortunate that the supporters of the Renee Fleming Initiative have provided the funds for this fresh campaign that reaches out to potential audiences through a wide range of media. Once people have experienced Lyric, they usually fall in love with it,” said Susan Mathieson Mayer, Lyric’s publicity and marketing chief. “And that’s the goal.”

At the annual “Stars of Lyric Opera at Millennium Park” free concert Saturday, which traditionally attracts a capacity crowd, Lyric will be passing out free totebags with the “Long Live Passion” slogan.

Photos of attractive young lead singers such as soprano Alyson Cambridge (appearing in this season’s opener, “The Tales of Hoffmann,” and starring in Lyric’s new production of “Show Boat”), along with Fleming and Lyric artistic director Andrew Davis, will be the visual hooks for the campaign.

As part of their research, members of Schmidt’s team started at­tending Lyric performances and listening to opera. They got hooked. “It’s a riveting art form,” he said. “There’s great drama in these eternal stories of love and betrayal that have stood the test of time.”

Andrew Patner is critic at large for WFMT-FM (98.7).