This past February, many local opera fans were taken aback when Andreas Mitisek announced that he was stepping down as general director Chicago Opera Theater ( COT ). The Viennese-born director/conductor/designer fulfilled his five-year contract with COT, which he kept on top of his other duties at California-based Long Beach Opera, where he has been artistic and general director since 2003.
"It wasn't an easy decision," said Mitisek, citing the need to carve out more time to purse artistic projects that he wasn't at liberty to name. Yet Mitisek was also proud of his time with COT, notably eliminating the company's debt and also establishing a cash reserve of more than $850,000.
Executive director Douglas Clayton has already been named as COT's next general director ( he plans on hiring a music director for the company soon ). Yet there are still projects ahead that will keep Mitisek involved with COT a little longer.
Coming up this month, Mitisek conducts the Midwest premiere of composer Philip Glass's 25th opera, The Perfect American, which is a fictionalized look at the final days of Walt Disney. Mitisek also returns at the start of COT's recently announced 2017-18 season to direct star lesbian soprano Patricia Racette in Menotti's 1950 opera tragedy The Consul.
Like so many of the works presented by COT during Mitisek's tenure, both The Perfect American and The Consul are co-productions with Long Beach Opera. Mitisek acknowledges the cost-savings effectiveness in the sharing of so many productions, but also the "synergy in new or unknown works being seen in more than one place."
Many critics noted the audacity of Long Beach Opera presenting the U.S. debut of The Perfect American practically in the backyard of the Walt Disney Corporation. The 2013 opera is inspired by Peter Stephan Jungk's 2001 fictionalized novel Der König von Amerika, and doesn't always portray Disney in the most flattering light.
"One of Walt Disney's greatest inventions was himself," said Mitisek, noting that Disney cultivated a very clean image where he tried to avoid being seen smoking on camera. "No one is only good. We all have different dimensions."
The opera also isn't meant to be a real-life biography, especially since characters like Abraham Lincoln, pop artist Andy Warhol and Disney's late parents also appear in the work.
"When I started out, people thought I was going to laugh at him," Glass said in interview with The Guardian newspaper. "But I see Walt Disney as an icon of modernity, a man able to build bridges between highbrow culture and popular culture, just like Leonard Bernstein, who could jump from a Broadway musical to a Mahler cycle."
As for the choice to revive The Consul, Mitisek revealed that it had a lot to do with Racettealthough, now, The Consul's plot of a political prisoner's wife desperately trying to get a U.S. visa will seem timely in light of the current presidential administration's stance against refugees.
"Patricia Racette and I had such a wonderful time together working on Poulenc's La Voix Humaine, so we were looking for another project to collaborate together," Mitisek said. "She told me that Magda [in The Consul] was one of her dream roles."
During his time with COT, Mitisek said he was proud of the many different projects he helped bring to Chicago. He specifically cited the special swimming pool productions of gay composer Ricky Ian Gordon's version of Orpheus and Eurydice in 2013. Mitisek was also especially proud of COT's first word-premiere commission of The Invention of Morel by rock drummer Stewart Copeland ( formerly of The Police ) that was staged in the recently refurbished Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building.
Mitisek acknowledges that the other works scheduled for COT's 2017-18 season are largely the doing of Clayton. There's the co-world premiere with Opera Philadelphia of the Victorian thriller Elizabeth Cree by composer Kevin Putts ( Silent Night ), plus a double bill of Donizetti one-act operas Il Pigmalione from early in the Italian composer's career, and Rita from near the end of his life.
"It's always rewarding to experience operas from different time periods, but also operas from different points of a composer's life," Mitisek said.
And as for any future collaborations between Long Beach Opera and COT, Mitisek said the two companies "will always be in open communication with each other" and likely maintain close connections on "collaborations that will fit us both."
Chicago Opera Theatre's Midwest premiere of The Perfect American is staged at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 22, and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 30, at Millennium Park's Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph St. Tickets are $39-$125.
Season subscriptions are also on sale for Chicago Opera Theater's 2017-18 season of Menotti's The Consul, the world premiere co-production of Kevin Puts' Elizabeth Cree and the Donizetti double bill of Il Pigmalione and Rita. These productions are staged at the Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan Ave. Call 312-704-8414 or visit ChicagoOperaTheater.org .