Lyric to stage opera adaptation of 'Bel Canto'

The Lyric Opera of Chicago is set to produce a world premiere opera adaptation of Ann Patchett's best-selling novel "Bel Canto" during its 2015-16 season.

Lyric general director Anthony Freud made the announcement about the commission at a news conference Tuesday. In attendance were Patchett, Lyric creative consultant Renée Fleming and members of the creative team, which included Peruvian composer Jimmy López, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz ("Anna in the Tropics"), director Stephen Wadsworth and conductor/Lyric music director Andrew Davis.

"The creation of new work is a fundamental, vital part of a major opera company's activity," Freud said in a statement. "I couldn't be more excited at the start of my tenure here that Lyric is embarking on its latest mainstage commission."

"Bel Canto" is the Lyric's seventh world premiere, and is drawn from Patchett's 2001 novel about a famous American opera singer named Roxanne Coss and a group of Japanese businessmen who experience the effects of Stockholm syndrome when they get caught up in an extended hostage situation in South America. In writing her novel, Patchett was inspired by the Lima Crisis of 1996-97, when members of a revolutionary movement in Peru held hostages at the Japanese ambassador's house for 126 days.

"Bel Canto" was an "opera-worthy" choice selected specifically for the Lyric's Renée Fleming Initiative.

"It's about terrorism on one level," Fleming said in a statement. "But it's also about what happens when people are forced to live together for a long time, and how art can raise their level of humanity as a group."

Australian-American soprano Danielle de Niese has been cast in the role of Coss. Other casting information has not been released. For more information, visit lyricopera.org.