Tag Archives: Jyl Bonaguro

East meets West The upcoming Lyric Opera production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” offers a uniquely Eastern take on this timeless tragedy of a doomed geisha in love with a British Navy lieutenant. Starring Karah Son, one of the leading interpreters of Butterfly in our time, the opera will be directed by Matthew Ozawa, the son of a Caucasian mother and Japanese father. “This new production reclaims the opera’s narrative through the lens of an entirely Japanese and Japanese American creative team and amplifies the voices of an entirely female Japanese design collective,” Ozawa writes. The opera will run from March …

Having taught herself to sculpt marble, Jyl Bonaguro has set her sights on a contemporary re-imagining of one of the medium’s towering masterworks. For years, Jyl Bonaguro had a vision so clear it was almost haunting: sculpting a female figure in marble on the scale of Michelangelo’s David. Bonaguro, the current president of Chicago Sculpture International, is fundraising for her project to create Modern Athena, which has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the Cliff Dwellers Arts Foundation. Bonaguro tells Fra Noi about her passion for art, how she found her way to sculpting, and her determination to …