Erina Yashima leads Civic Orchestra and Ryan Opera Center singers in program of operatic favorites

“There’s never a dull moment in opera,” conductor Erina Yashima said. “That’s what I love about it — there is this aspect of spontaneity and unpredictability to it, which keeps everything very fresh and alive.” On Monday, June 1, Yashima will harness that freshness and vitality when she leads the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and singers from Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center in a concert of operatic favorites at Symphony Center. 

The German-born conductor is equally at home on the concert stage as in the opera pit. She served as First Kapellmeister at the Komische Opera Berlin from 2022 to 2024 and has conducted at prestigious opera houses around the world, including making her debut at Lyric Opera of Chicago in November 2024 with Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. This season includes debuts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz, and Omaha Symphony Orchestra, as well as her Metropolitan Opera debut conducting The Magic Flute.   

Her big break as a young conductor came in 2015, when Zell Music Director Riccardo Muti invited her to audition for the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprenticeship at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During her three seasons in the apprenticeship program, she learned many things from Muti, especially about opera. She recalled a particularly inspiring masterclass he gave on Verdi’s Falstaff, where she learned how to read an opera score and libretto, as well as how to work with singers and build a foundation of orchestral sound around them. Most importantly, she witnessed his utmost devotion to and care of the text at all times.

The concert on June 1 will be the seventh collaboration between the Civic Orchestra and the Ryan Opera Center since these concerts began in May 2012. It will be Yashima’s first time conducting this program, which has become a tradition and a favorite of many of the orchestra’s musicians.   

When asked what makes this concert so special, Civic cellist J Holzen said, “The musicianship from the Ryan Opera Center singers is really unmatched.” Plus, because the concert comes late in the season, the orchestra has had a chance to “develop a group sound,” they said, “functioning as a well-oiled machine that can collaborate really closely and respond artistically to the soloists that we have on stage with us.” During Yashima’s time as the CSO’s conducting apprentice, she also had the opportunity to cut her chops conducting the Civic Orchestra, the training program of the CSO’s Negaunee Music Institute that prepares young professionals for careers in orchestral music. She has since returned as a guest conductor on several occasions, most recently leading Mahler’s Fifth Symphony in December 2024.   

“It was very exciting to work with the young musicians,” Yashima said of her time conducting the Civic Orchestra as an apprentice. “What is very special is that now that I’m guest conducting, from time to time I meet Civic musicians in other orchestras, and that always makes me happy.” 

For violinist Naomi Powers, it will be her first time participating in this concert with the Ryan Center singers. But she has plenty of operatic experience under her belt from her master’s program at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. “I feel really lucky that I’ve been able to do a lot of opera,” she said. “I really love opera, and it’s something that a lot of people don’t get to experience. It’s so different from playing with an orchestra where it’s just instrumentalists. A lot of what we do is kind of instinctual in a way, and we have to be listening and focusing so much, and when you can do that with people you don’t even see, it’s really cool.” 

I feel really lucky that I’ve been able to do a lot of opera,” she said. “I really love opera, and it’s something that a lot of people don’t get to experience. It’s so different from playing with an orchestra where it’s just instrumentalists. -- Civic violinist Naomi Powers

While the orchestra will be playing on the stage with the singers and not in a pit for this concert, Yashima agrees that it takes different skills to conduct opera versus symphonic music — but they are skills she has always wanted to cultivate in becoming a complete musician and conductor. “I have always loved opera, and I always wanted to do both,” she expressed. “Sometimes it’s hard to develop a career and also your skill set equally balanced between opera and symphonic repertoire. It almost feels like they require different mindsets and approaches and also just skills in general.” 

Yashima’s love of singing has proven an asset in preparing operas. “I love the human voice, and I love singers, and I love just singing for myself,” she explained. “When I go through a score, I very often just sing through it just to have the feel for it, and I think that helps me to support a singer as much as possible through a difficult score.”  

When I go through a score, I very often just sing through it just to have the feel for it, and I think that helps me to support a singer as much as possible through a difficult score. — Erina Yashima

The program on June 1 will include selections from Mozart’s Don Giovanni—an opera Yashima has conducted several times—alongside excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Verdi’s La Traviata, and Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila. The concert will conclude with the uplifting chorus “The Promise of Living” from Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land. While Yashima did not select the repertoire on this occasion, she said she is pleased with the selections and the balance of different styles, time periods, and languages. 

Above all, Yashima is excited to return to Chicago, a place she considers her home base in the United States. “I’m very grateful for my time in Chicago with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and I have many, many great memories and friends from that time,” she said. “I’m always very glad to come back. It’s a beautiful city with wonderful people.”