Welcome to Cornell's Lyric Theatre!

2009-10 marks our thirteenth season since our first production: George Gershwin's rarely performed one-act opera Blue Monday.

Since its inception, Lyric Theatre has presented a rich tapestry of musical theatre and operatic offerings. These fully staged and costumed productions have included Godspell - 2000 A.D., Hair, The Secret Garden, Sweeney Todd, The Marriage of Figaro, Gianni Schicchi, and Trouble in Tahiti.

Lyric Theatre's 2009 production Love and Anguish: An Evening of Opera on The Hilltop, features the world premiere of The Lady with the Pet Dog, a one-act opera with libretto by Barbara Lau and Jonathan Thull and music by Michael Cash. Based on Chekhov's short story, The Lady with the Pet Dog is written for nine performers and a small chamber orchestra, and incorporates projections of paintings by Russian landscape artist Isaac Levitan, a contemporary of Chekhov's. The first half of the evening features selected operatic arias including excerpts from Puccini's La Bohème, Mozart's Così fan tutte, Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief, Massenet's Werther, and Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe.

Participants in Lyric Theatre are comprised of students not only from the music and theatre departments, but from all academic disciplines. Many of the performers are scholarship recipients from both music and theatre with awards ranging from $2,500 up to $20,000.

With the recent completion of Kimmel Theatre, Lyric Theatre has a new home with all the amenities and capabilities of producing high-end theatrical entertainment. In addition, guest artists are brought in to direct or costume a show, bringing their invaluable professional experiences to students and helping bridge the gap between academia and the ‘real world'.

To view forthcoming theatre productions and related activity, visit the Department of Theatre and Communication Studies.

Thanks and enjoy!

Jonathon Thull
Director, Cornell Lyric Theatre
jthull@cornellcollege.edu