Dickie to step down at Chicago Opera

Chicago Opera Theater general director Brian Dickie has announced his plans to step down at the end of his contract in August 2012.

“I've been very fortunate in my life to have lived in Chicago,” Dickie said, adding that he will “miss everything about Chicago.”

Dickie arrived in Chicago in 1999 following major stints leading the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in Great Britain and the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. He helped elevate the local and worldwide stature of Chicago Opera Theater, which moved from the Athenaeum Theatre to Millennium Park's Harris Theater for Music and Dance under his tenure.

The company also presented 20 Chicago premieres under Dickie's watch, ranging from early Baroque masterpieces like Monteverdi's “Ofreo” from 1607 to important modern works like John Adams' “Nixon in China” from 1987.

“Frankly the thing for COT to do was to supplement the work that Lyric (Opera of Chicago) was doing in terms of the breadth of the repertoire,” Dickie said, emphasizing Chicago Opera's many local premieres of works by Handel and Britten.

“I also wanted to present some alternate styles in staging classical works, because I feel these great operas can be presented in a variety of ways,” Dickie said.

Dickie will mark 50 years of working in opera administration when he steps down from Chicago Opera in 2012. Now at age 69, Dickie plans to return to Great Britain to be closer to his three grown children and nine grandchildren and for his 7-year-old daughter to continue with her schooling.

Chicago-area opera fans are already in for a major shake-up, since Lyric Opera of Chicago general director William Mason also announced his intentions to step down at the end of the 2012 season.

The Chicago Opera Theater's 2011 season begins in March with the Chicago premieres of Tod Machover's 2009 opera “Death and the Powers,” Charpentier's 1693 version of “Medea” and a double bill of Janacek's “The Diary of One Who Disappeared” and Schumann's “A Woman's Love and Life.”