Visionary opera director Yuval Sharon will present the 2025 Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Family Lectures May 6, 13, and 20, 2025, which will consist of three public lectures and a special performance of John Cage’s Europera 5. All events are free and open to the public. 

Lecture 1: "Anarchy at the Opera"
May 6, 2025, 6 to 7:30 p.m. CDT

Lecture 2: "Burn Down the Opera Houses!"
May 13, 2025, 6 to 7:30 p.m. CDT
* Book signing immediately following this lecture

Lecture 3: “John Cage and Anarchic Opera” and Performance: John Cage’s Europera 5
May 20, 2025, 6 to 8:30 p.m. CDT

All lectures and performances will take place at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, Performance Hall, 915 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637.

A 2017 MacArthur fellow, Sharon is widely celebrated as one of the opera world’s most innovative and inspiring figures. During the 2024-25 academic year, Sharon has been the inaugural Global Solutions Visiting Fellow at UChicago’s Neubauer Collegium. He is currently the Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director at the Detroit Opera.

Picking up on a line from his new book, A New Philosophy of Opera (2024), director Yuval Sharon  explores the question under his theme of "Anarchy at the Opera": Is opera a standard bearer or a pall bearer for the status quo?

Anarchy, as a much-maligned political ideology, offers a provocative and generative way to consider an evolution for the art form of opera as a critique of the status quo. These lectures explore both historic experiments in non-hierarchical creation—John Cage’s Europeras and the history of improvisation in opera—as well as Sharon’s own practical experiences with “anarchic” opera (the George E. Lewis and Monteverdi mash-up of Comet/Poppea and the multi-perspectival Sweet Land, both produced by The Industry). He looks at the institution of producing opera to consider if there are other forms of production that can make opera a more dynamic and revolutionary presence in our culture.

The final lecture will conclude with a rare live performance of John Cage’s Europera 5, directed by Sharon, as a demonstration of the ideas explored in his talks.

Q&A with Yuval Sharon

In this Q&A, the opera director discusses the present and future of opera, his ongoing relationship with UChicago, and how his latest book, A New Philosophy of Opera, has informed his upcoming Berlin Family Lectures and performance.

Much of your work challenges the status quo—spatially, narratively, even logistically. What kinds of risks have yielded the most surprising or meaningful artistic results for you?

The most meaningful artistic results I’ve experienced in my work are from the times I’ve taken opera outside the opera house, performing it in parks, parking garages or in moving vehicles. These projects beyond the proscenium arch of the theater became the most visceral ways to remind audiences of their participatory power in a performance. The normal rules that dictate the relationship between artist and spectator are called into question once that architectural separation is lifted, and I find the exploration that becomes possible in that space truly exciting.

How do you balance honoring the traditions of opera while pushing boundaries to explore new ideas?

This is one of the constant tensions for interpreters in any medium, although in opera, audiences are still becoming aware of the interpretative potential of the visual aspects of the art form. I still find myself explaining to audiences why a director has the license to change seemingly fixed elements of the narrative (and this is a major element of my book A New Philosophy of Opera). Theater does not have that same challenge with its public; how often do you hear calls for Shakespeare to be performed exclusively in tights? But I feel opera audiences are becoming more open to the creative license of directors and designers in connecting older texts with contemporary aesthetics and values. 

Each and every project is its own balancing act between tradition and innovation; what works well for one composer, or one composition, or one community, may not necessarily work when transposed into another situation. You have to approach each work on its own terms, making each production (to paraphrase the director Wieland Wagner) a journey to an unknown destination.

How do you hope your work is influencing not just how opera is made today, but how institutions think about the future of productions, sustainability and audience relationships?

This is a central preoccupation in serving as an artistic director, a different role than when I am “merely” the artist. As artistic director, I am articulating the values of the institution as they unfold both in an artwork and in the making of that artwork. We have a fallacious view of opera as monolithic and hierarchical, when it is the most ridiculously collaborative art form that humans have yet come up with. As artistic director, I can create the conditions for every voice to maintain some of its autonomy, not simply be subsumed in my vision. That is one of the main topics of my upcoming lectures: an “anarchic” organization of artists feels to me an aspiration for opera, perhaps best encapsulated in the work of John Cage.

How has your time as a Global Solutions Visiting Fellow at UChicago’s Neubauer Collegium contributed to your current work and your ongoing thinking about the history, theory and practice of opera?

It has been an enormous privilege to have the support of the Neubauer Collegium in the making of several projects. Their support of my production of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte has helped me delve deep into the development of artificial intelligence and consider its philosophical underpinnings. They are currently creating a wonderful “home base” for the research and development of my Ring cycle for the Metropolitan Opera. But most importantly, they have plugged me in to the incredible community of the university and put me in touch with the world of ideas flourishing here, which has been an invigorating experience for me!

What should audiences know about your upcoming lectures “Anarchy at the Opera”? And why did you choose John Cage’s Europera 5 as the closing performance?

John Cage’s Europera cycle has had a formidable influence on my thinking around opera, and it embodies the idea of a “friendly anarchy” (or, as I like to call it, a joyful chaos). It offers a perfect encapsulation of the themes of my talks, so it has the potential to offer listeners a direct experience of those ideas in practice. I don’t feel I can just talk about opera for three lectures without also offering listeners a glimpse into what it is in practice! Plus, it gives me the satisfaction of having directed all five of the pieces in Cage’s cycle of works!

Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin are Chicago philanthropists and longtime supporters of the University of Chicago. Randy Lamm Berlin, AM’77, is a former lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and a member and past chairperson of the Division of the Humanities Council. Melvin R. Berlin (March 23, 1929–July 26, 2019) was Chairman Emeritus and founder of Berlin Packaging, LLC. The Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Family Lectures are named in honor of their gift to the Division of the Humanities. Read more here.