Night of Mellon Collie transforms Lyric Opera

Billy Corgan is not the first rock artist to have his music backed by orchestras and choirs, but he might be the first professional wrestling impresario to move into an opera house. This month’s celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the release of his Smashing Pumpkins landmark concept album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness has been given the full on Lyric Opera treatment: just as they did with the Chicago Voices concert and many of the musicals, Lyric turned their formidable orchestra and chorus toward fleshing out a wall of human sound. Now it was a bit unusual to see soprano Sydney Mancasola and mezzo Zoie Reams with hand held mikes after seeing them command the space unamplified so recently in Fidelio and Medea, but mikes are in keeping with the style of indie rock.  

I am still trying to decide if Corgan's iconic voice made for a thought provoking or jarring compare and contrast with tenor Dominick Valdés Chenes and baritone Edward Parks honeyed and highly trained voices. Corgan’s singing certainly grounded us back in the original and was satisfying and thrilling for fans who may never have been to the Lyric before. It layered the original sound with this new interpretation in a fully fleshed way. And the fans loved it!

 The audience demographics were decidedly unusual: many parents with their teens, trying to impart what this album meant to their personal history. The evening, indeed the entire endeavor, was a grand creative experiment and kudos to the Lyric for taking the opera house back to its roots and history: opera was the rock concert of its time.  It was popular music. And so maybe having a poet who is also a wrestling promoter is the perfect composer for these times. This show was boundary crossing and fulfilling in so many ways. 

There are so many tribute bands these days, I think it is masterful to make your own tribute performance and stretch yourself as an artist.  Everyone in the production seemed to be having a grand time.   

The piece was also clearly a love letter to Chicago underlined and realized through Greg Emetaz’s video design.  Hats off to whoever was editing the live feed, giving us clear views of instrumentalists then cutting to the vastness of the orchestra and chorus to the prerecorded images: it was masterful. 

For me, however, the highlight of the evening was the ASL interpretation by Havalah Teaman and Veramarie Baldoza.  All of the major theatres in town offer ASL (American Sign Language ) interpreted shows as a way of being more inclusive for audience members with disabilities.  You can find a  schedule here: https://chicagoplays.com/access/  or you can look for the two hands ASL icon in the calendar of your favorite theatre company. 

Unlike closed captioning, ASL is a visual not literal language, so it is often more suitable than captioning for the poetic. And in this case it added immensely to the experience of the music giving layers of meaning to the score and lyrics.  The skilled interpreters create a  whole additional overlay of meaning.  One may wonder why would a person with a hearing impairment attend a musical event?  There are many reasons as individual as the people attending.  Keep in mind that music, especially big music like rock concerts or operas, can be felt through the vibrations as well as heard. Also if you did not always have a hearing disability you may have a memory of a particular music and want to be a part of the energy of the fans revisiting listening.  And not everyone is fully hearing impaired so the interpretation or captioning is filling in for what cannot be heard.  Finally ASL imparts meaning through an embodied visual language that interprets the meaning and imparts it in symbolic and physical ways. There is some acting our ot the beats and indications of instrumentation as well as finger spelling: and the interpreters spoke to the audience members they were signing for and asked what they wanted and then imparted it the way that gave the audience what they requested.   

To do an artistically beautiful coherent interpretation requires a great deal of preparation.  In this case it included listening to the original album over and over, attending performances, clarifying vocabulary and meanings and finally working together as a team: for a show like this you always have more than one interpreter because the physicality is tiring. Each interpreter has a style and when they work together it has to be a collaboration. And there is a need to develop vocabulary since there may not yet be ASL for concepts so they have to be created.  Interpreting is as intense as any other component to make the overall experience of the evening as meaningful as possible and for me, it made the moment. 

A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness played at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, 20 N Wacker Drive, Chicago on selected nights from November 21 to 30, 2025 . For more information go to https://www.lyricopera.org/shows/upcoming/2025-26/a-night-of-mellon-collie-and-infinite-sadness/

 No part of this article was created using AI

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