Lyric Opera’s Millennium Park concert heralds a promising season

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Emily Fons (left) sings with Renee Fleming at Saturday’s Millennium Park concert. | DAN REST~LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO

Updated: November 9, 2011 3:43PM

Saturday night’s edition of the now annual “Stars of Lyric Opera at Millennium Park” concert at the Pritzker Pavilion had a lot to pull together and did so with great success and, dare we say it, passion.

Chicago’s grand opera company was unrolling its new marketing campaign, “Long Live Passion,” complete with banners, tote bags and the troupe’s name in lights atop at least one Michigan Avenue skyscraper. The free concert serves as a preview of a new season and its artists, and jam-packed seating and Great Lawn areas apparently held 16,000 folk including hundreds of standees along the concrete pathways.

The waxing moon, to hit full, harvest status Monday, illuminated the focused crowd also witnessing new general director-designate Anthony Freud’s first public role; he was poised, polished and welcoming in his opening remarks. Young singers from Lyric’s Ryan Center program took the stage along with internationally known performers and some lesser-known guests who showed impressive mettle.

The event also served as a citywide commemoration of the Sept. 11 anniversary, and the clear prominence of superstar soprano Renee Fleming in her new role as Lyric’s creative consultant was harnessed for that function as well. Fleming, who reminded the crowd that she had been in Chicago 10 years ago to the day (rehearsing the new production of Verdi’s “Otello” that opened the 2001 Lyric season), sang a well-modulated (but kitschily orchestrated) “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Carousel” as a tribute and as musical launch to the two-hour program.

Fleming was back for a rather over-milked “O mio babbino caro” from Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi” but was much more genuinely appealing in the late sub of the Barcarolle from Offenbach’s season-opening “Tales of Hoffmann” with superb mezzo Emily Fons (her nuanced performance of Nicklausse’s romance from the Offenbach was an evening highlight). Fleming closed the program with a not over-giddy “Jewel Song” from Gounod’s “Faust.”

“Hoffmann’s” French conductor Emmanuel Villaume showed his special ability to shift gears rapidly from style to style with the fine Lyric Orchestra. Fons and recent multiple-competition winner tenor Rene Barbera — wholly assured both in his signature high C’s parading “A mes amis” from Donizetti’s “Daughter of the Regiment” and his side of the duet from the same composer’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” — were the two current Ryan Center reps. Soprano Susanna Phillips, an alumnus who will take the title role of “Lucia” here this fall, delivered a jolly “Je veux vivre” from Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Another alum, tenor Matthew Polenzani (prepping now for his own title turn in “Hoffmann”), though down with a cold, delivered a stirring aria from Massenet’s “Werther.”

At 64, baritone James Morris brings a long history to the stage, even if understandably past his vocal prime, and his authority showed in excerpts from Verdi’s “I Vespri Siciliani” and, with young Croatian baritone Ljubomir Puskaric (debuting in Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” this fall), Bellini’s “I Puritani.”

On the up-and-coming side, mezzo Jamie Barton, debuting here this season, was a rich-voiced showstopper, both in “O mon Fernand” from Donizetti’s “La favorite” and in the added duet from Delibes’ “Lakme” with dependable returning soprano Anna Christy.

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