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Lattimore still lives in Chicago, and teaches at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts, but her singing career has since taken her around the world. It’s been possible to hear her on local stages now and then—she has a gig at least once a year with the Grant Park Symphony, for example. But there’s an exceptional opportunity coming up: when Lyric does Porgy and Bess this fall, with Gordon Hawkins and Morenike Fadayomi alternating with Lester Lynch and Lisa Daltirus in the title roles, Lattimore will be there, too, as Serena, whose husband’s murder sets the plot in motion. She’ll mourn his loss with the majestic “My Man’s Gone Now.”
That aria, which takes the universal human wail in the face of death and turns it into a thing of transcendent beauty, is wrenching under any circumstances. But Lattimore says it will have a special meaning for her when she performs it at Lyric. It’s the piece she sang four years ago at the University of Illinois’ memorial tribute to her mentor, baritone William Warfield—and she’ll be singing it on the stage he occupied over a half century ago when he played Porgy.
aPorgy and Bess, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, and lyrics by the Heywards and Ira Gershwin, opens Tue 11/18, 7:30 PM. Through 12/19: Lyric Opera of Chicago, 20 N. Wacker, 312-332-2244, $32-$197. —Deanna Isaacs
