Beyond the Aria: Ying Fang, Kayleigh Decker, Ian Rucker

Lyric Opera of Chicago
Lyric Opera of Chicago is committed to redefining what it means to experience great opera. The company is driven to deliver consistently excellent artistry through innovative, relevant, celebratory programming that engages and energizes new and traditional audiences.

Under the leadership of General Director, President & CEO Anthony Freud, Music Director Enrique Mazzola, and Special Projects Advisor Renée Fleming, Lyric is dedicated to reflecting, and drawing strength from, the diversity of Chicago. Lyric offers, through innovation, collaboration, and evolving learning opportunities, ever-more exciting, accessible, and thought-provoking audience and community experiences. We also stand committed to training the artists of the future, through The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center; and to becoming increasingly diverse across our audiences, staff, programming, and artists—magnifying the welcoming pull of our art form, our company, and our city.

Through the timeless power of voice, the splendor of a great orchestra and chorus, theater, dance, design, and truly magnificent stagecraft, Lyric is devoted to immersing audiences in worlds both familiar and unexpected, creating shared experiences that resonate long after the curtain comes down.
 

Ying Fang
Chinese soprano Ying Fang has been praised as “indispensable at the Met in Mozart” (The New York Times) and for “a voice that can stop time, pure and rich and open and consummately expressive” (Financial Times).

In the 2023–24 season, Fang returned to Opéra national de Paris as Zerlina in Don Giovanni conducted by Antonello Manacorda, Dutch National Opera as Poppea in Agrippina and Pamina in Die Zauberflöte conducted by Riccardo Minasi, the Metropolitan Opera in her role debut as Euridice in Orfeo ed Eudidice, and Santa Fe Opera in her role debut as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. On the concert stage, she reunited with conductor Raphaël Pichon in the Mozart Requiem on tour with Ensemble Pygmalion, a project which also features a recording by the Harmonia Mundi label, and joined Maestro Pichon for Mozart’s C Minor Mass in her debut with the Munich Philharmonic. She joined Noord Nederlands Orkest Ein Deutsches Requiem, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Mahler’s 4th symphony with Susanna Mälkki, and sang Carmina Burana with the St. Louis Symphony under the baton of Stéphane Denève with the Orchestra of St. Lukes at Carnegie Hall.

A native of Ningbo, China, Fang is the recipient of the Martin E. Segal Award, the Hildegard Behrens Foundation Award, the Rose Bampton Award of The Sullivan Foundation, The Opera Index Award, and First Prize of the Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition. In 2009, she become one of the youngest singers to win one of China’s most prestigious awards – the China Golden Bell Award for Music. She has been hailed as “the most gifted Chinese soprano of her generation” by Ningbo Daily.

Ying Fang holds a Master’s degree and an Artist Diploma in Opera Study from The Juilliard School and a Bachelor’s degree from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She is a former member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.

 

Kayleigh Decker
American mezzo-soprano Kayleigh Decker has a must-hear voice. A superb song interpreter, she was recently named one of Caramoor’s Schwab Vocal Rising Stars, and gave a highly acclaimed performance for the Citywide recital series at Carnegie Hall.

Decker’s operatic triumphs include recent debuts with Welsh National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Dallas Opera, and Cincinnati Opera in leading roles of operas by Rossini, Mozart and Handel. She has also been featured on the concert stage as a soloist with San Francisco Symphony, Les Violons du Roi, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Orchestre de Paris.

In 2024–25, Decker returns to Lyric Opera Chicago in her professional debut as Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, makes her house and role debut for Opera de Monte Carlo and covers Cherubino in her house debut for The Metropolitan Opera. On the concert platform, Decker returns to Chicago for performances of Handel’s Messiah and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the Grant Park Music Festival.

 

Ian Rucker
The third-year Ryan Opera Center baritone from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, will appear at Lyric in the 2024/25 Season as Schaunard in La Bohème. He holds a master's degree in vocal performance from Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, where his roles included Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro and the title role in The Barber of Seville. He has also appeared as Papageno in The Magic Flute at Bloomington Chamber Opera. 

Rucker earned his bachelor's degree in vocal performance at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where he was heard in the title roles of Don Giovanni and Sweeney Todd, as well as Officer Lockstock in Urinetown and Ernst Ludwig in Cabaret. Concert engagements include Carmina Burana with the Northwest Indiana Symphony. 

Rucker is a former Palm Beach Opera Apprentice Artist and a former Aspen Music Festival Renée Fleming Artist. He recently received an Encouragement Award in the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition (Wisconsin District) and first place in the James Toland Vocal Arts Competition.