New Millennium Orchestra Opera

New Millennium Orchestra Opera

Milioto and Lee Team Up For an Evening of Superb Music

A Night of Favorite Opera

Yonghoon Lee

A great tenor, a fine orchestra, a gifted conductor, Orchestra Hall: It doesn’t get any better than this. This thought passed through my mind as I sat in Orchestra Hall’s Upper Balcony listening to lirico-spinto Tenor Yonghoon Lee effortlessly enchant a largely Korean audience with his renditions of some of opera’s most beloved Tenor arias. Accompanying Mr. Lee was The New Millennium Orchestra led by its co-founder and Conductor, Francesco Milioto.

People's Gas Building

The concert was preceded by a reception/fundraiser for the orchestra at Chicago’s Cliff Dweller’s Club, high atop the building at 200 S. Michigan Avenue. Across was the Art Institute of Chicago, Millennium Park, Grant Park, the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium and Monroe Street Harbor. Buckingham Fountain seemed almost miniature from the Cliff Dweller’s vantage point. Across Jackson Boulevard sits the Daniel Burnham masterpiece, People’s Gas Building, now facing serious deterioration and crumbling capitals on the columns that surmount the top of the building. The balustrade atop the building features a row of ferocious lions that, from the nearly level vantage point of Cliff Dweller’s, remind us of the opulent, fin de siècle architecture that still graces Chicago’s downtown.

Mr. Lee

Mr. Lee made his operatic debut in 2007 in Santiago Chile, a city with a climate remarkably similar to Chicago’s except “revered” in a seasonal sense as they are in the Southern hemisphere. He has since established a remarkable career as a an internationally known tenor have appeared both at Chicago’s Lyric and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Mr. Lee’s program included noteworthy renditions of La fleur que tu m’avais jetée from Bizet’s Carmen, and a courageous finale in the form of Nessun dorma from Puccini’s Turandot. The first half of the program was all Verdi, including Ma se m’è forza perderti from Un Ballo in Maschera and La vita é Inferno from La For a del Destino.

Mr. Lee retained sufficient energy to deliver several encores including a Korean folk song with Western orchestral accompaniment that delighted the audience. His final number was Amazing Grace. Mr. Lee is a devout Christian and gave testimony to the divine inspiration he received to return to his singing career when he had abandoned it a number of years earlier.

Mr. Lee is clearly destined for great things as an operatic tenor. Watch for his future roles at major houses in the U.S. and abroad.

Mr. Milioto

Francesco Milioto

Francesco Milioto is one of Chicago’s rising conducting stars. But there’s more to this youthful conductor than simply the ability to get an orchestra to perform beyond its capabilities (although that is a significant achievement in itself.) Mr. Milioto is additionally a charming individual; he’s the kind of person you’d enjoy having dinner with or a cocktail after a hard day of work. His charming personality and witty, urbane intelligence makes him a desirable social companion in any setting.

On the podium his is a man simultaneously yielding and in control. The program was interspersed with orchestral pieces, generally overtures or other selections from opera (example: Meditation from Thaïs by Massenet.) During those moments he performed just as one might expect a seasoned conductor and then some. Precise tutties, effective and appropriate dynamics and a dramatic sense that was a pleasure to watch. While accompanying Mr. Lee he added to these already impressive credentials an uncanny ability to watch and sense his soloist, giving the tenor the artistic freedom to interpret the aria while still maintaining the musical integrity of the piece.

Mr. Milioto is another Chicago artist to keep in your performing arts focus.

New Millennium Orchestra

This small but amazingly talented ensemble is another born-in-Chicago ensemble to command your attention. True, ensemble playing becomes easier if the group of musicians is smaller but it is also true that sound becomes more transparent. Even fewer hesitations and false notes are permitted when a single individual makes up a larger percentage of the section. The New Millennium Orchestra was certainly up to the challenge, exhibiting exceptional intonation, attack and sensitivity whether playing accompaniment to Mr. Lee’s gentle piano passages or vigorously attacking Verdi’s Overture to La Forza del Destino. Importantly, although it could have overpowered the tenor at certain climactic points in the program, it did not. The orchestra provided sufficient power to give the audience a sense of grand climax but still allowed Mr. Lee to remain the center of the aria’s gravity.

Other Notes

I didn’t know that Symphony Center had free Wi-Fi. It enabled me to check my bus schedule to ensure that I wasn’t going to be stranded if I stayed for yet another encore. Thanks, CSO and CSO President Deborah Rutter!

I need to bring a camera back to my next visit to Cliff Dwellers. The city-lake-scapes are magnificent.

I recently discovered how easy it is to insert diacritical marks when using Word or Outlook (that uses Word as its default editor.) It certainly makes entry of classical music names much easier.