Securing its reputation as the definitive production of Leonard Bernstein’s massive musical Mass, Ravinia’s July 20 command encore presentation, with 200 artists on stage, will be taped for a national television special to air in 2020. The television production team is led by Emmy and Peabody Award-winning executive producer Samuel J. Paul (Live from the Met, The Kennedy Center Presents, American Style), producer Bernhard Fleischer, and director Michael Beyer. Broadcast details will be forthcoming.
Last summer, the first performance of Mass for both Ravinia and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra won public and critical acclaim, landing on the Chicago Tribune’s list of the 10 best concerts of 2018, with critic Howard Reich calling it “simply quintessential, stylistically unbound, anything-goes Bernstein, presented on the grandest scale possible.”
“Every once in a while, you experience a live performance that connects so beautifully that you dread it being lost to the ether after that single performance—especially when it’s something so rarely performed because of the resources it requires,” said Welz Kauffman, President and CEO of Ravinia, where the program changes most every night. “ I just couldn’t let that happen with Mass. It took a bit of doing, but I was able to bring back all the principals who made our presentation so spectacular, and then secured the funding and the talented filmmakers who would make sure this work lived on forever, not for one night.”
Audiences who attend the July 20 performance starring Tony-winning baritone Paulo Szot with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marin Alsop, may be part of the action for the special and its accompanying “making of” documentary that will include audience reactions. The one-night-only performance begins at 8 p.m. Jamie Bernstein, Leonard’s oldest child and author of the best-selling memoir Famous Father Girl, will also be available to sign copies of her book. Tickets to this performance are on sale now, exclusively at Ravinia.org.