Bellissima Opera

  • Aug 24, 2025 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm – In this friend-raiser we challenge ourselves to bridge the gap from classical to contemporary, and match up themes that have touched our lives. We’ll have songs from Puccini to Porter, Gounod to Gershwin, Mozart to the Music Man.  With Susan Dennis, Sheri Flanders, Kenneth Fobs,…

  • Midsummer Dream Fairies & Fables

    Jul 17, 2025 – Jul 18, 2025 @ 7:30 pm – 10:00 pm – Join our cast of 34 Fairies and Elves, Queens and Sorcerers for the Chicago premiere of Pauline Viardot Garcia’s Le dernier sorcier (The Last Sorcerer) and Other Magical WorksCo-produced by Working In Concert and Chamber Opera Chicago Carl Ratner & Christine Steyer, directorsPaul Geiger…

  • Apr 11, 2025 @ 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm – Carl Ratner and Christine Steyer join pianist Dana Brown for a classical date “From Chicago to Paris with Love” at Davenport’s Cabaret

  • International Women’s Day 2025

    Mar 8, 2025 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm – Come Celebrate Women in the Arts! Join us for our fourth annual International Women’s Day concert extravaganza on Saturday, March 8 at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. Doors open at 7 pm. Stay for the afterglow reception with the artists. Bellissima’s IWD 2025 Concert features an…

  • Spoon River House Festival

    Sep 13, 2024 – Sep 22, 2024 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm – The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame and Working In Concert invite you to the Hyde Park house where Edgar Lee Masters wrote the classic Spoon River Anthology. Three different shows take place in a 2-weekend festival celebrating this iconic work from…

  • A musical tribute to Carol Weston

    Aug 4, 2024 @ 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm – The Old Town School of Folk Music and Working In Concert invite her legion of friends, colleagues and fans to honor the late Carol Weston on Sunday, August 4, 2024, 3pm to 6pm at the Szold Hall of Old Town School. RSVP’s are appreciated, but…

  • An operatic double-header

    Jul 20, 2024 – Jul 21, 2024 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm – Save the date for “Speed Dating” and get ringside seats for “Outside the Ring” as Bellissima Opera brings us a double bill of the often poignant, sometimes outrageous, and always spectacular sports of dating and boxing. Speed Dating Tonight!, libretto and music…

  • Mar 8, 2024 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm – Our annual celebration showcasing women in the arts.Advanced reservation discount ends March 6. Singers Kimberly Jones, Janet Mensen Reynolds, Alison Meuth, and Christine Steyer are joined by collaborative pianists Jennifer McCabe and Sarah Yoon-Mayer. Special guests will be poet Maureen Kwiat Meshenberg and singer Dayanara…

  • Happy Apple Pie Shop Fundraiser

    Oct 28, 2023 @ 11:30 am – 5:00 pm – On Saturday, October 28, Oak Park’s Happy Apple Pie Shop will donate 10% of all their pies and mini-pie sales to Working In Concert’s Opera In The Classroom program. Since 2010, our Bellissima Opera outreach program has brought music to 24,000 area school kids.  Working In Concert President Christine Steyer will…

  • Two Concerts with Christine Steyer

    Oct 27, 2023 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Working In Concert President Christine Steyer will be offering two concerts this month. Steyer will be joined by Michael Finlay on piano and cellist Brian Hoffman in a unique program of seldom performed works. Click the link below to get tickets. October 27 in Schaumburg

  • Aug 28, 2023 – Sep 4, 2023 @ All Day – TRAVEL with us to FRANCE in 2023 The fifth Chicago Paris Cabaret Connexion exchange takes place in Paris from August 28 to September 4, 2023. Our mission is to “advance together the art of cabaret”. The itinerary includes 20 hours of workshops and master…

  • Birds, Bees, And Other Beasts

    Jul 30, 2023 @ 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm – Join us for our second summer friendraiser at a private garden in Albany Park. Swingin’ Sisters leads the pack with singers from SongShop and the Cabaret Connexion travelers including David Hoffman, the Swingin’ Sisters (Barbara, Carolyn and Tirzah), René Lara, Christian Halvorsen, Ruth Fuerst, Staci Kelley,…