safronia Makes a Splash
Last month, safronia—the new opera from Chicago’s inaugural Poet Laureate avery r. young—premiered at Lyric Opera in a special, concert-style presentation to widespread acclaim and excitement. We are thrilled to conclude the 2026/27 season with this breathtaking epic and bring it to life in our intimate space.
Individual tickets to safronia will be on sale in a few months, but group tickets are available now! Plan a trip to the theatre with ten (or more!) friends, secure your seats and unlock early access, and get ready for an unforgettable theatrical experience.
Here’s what you can expect:
“The music on offer is a blend of styles, including gospel, blues and copious amounts of retro-funk, and it’s strikingly uptempo and percussive almost all of the time…Court Theatre has already said it will fully stage the piece in its next season and that will probably reveal whether this show merits, say, a Broadway future”
– Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
“The significance of safronia is impossible to overstate. This new work is a seismic shift in opera; challenging what opera has been, and transforming what opera can be…safronia is so much more than the story. It is prayer from the ancestors. It is testimony for the lord. It is the fireworks of celebration and it is an abyss of mourning. It is kicking open the door to preach survival by any means necessary in a call-and-response holy-rolling exaltation. It claims everything. And it uncrooks the spine and sets the back straight….One can only hope that [avery r. young]’s extraordinary work is recognized for the ground-breaking musical experience that it is. Our world needs many future productions, to shake opera free of restrictive expectations and allow safronia to continue as an artwork that serves as an instrument of liberation.”
“Safronia is a time-traveling tale with motifs of surrealism and naturalism….musically beautiful and unlike anything I have seen in an opera…The characters are familiar but not stereotypes. They are fully formed with a backstory and a trajectory that pulls at the heart.”