Lyric Opera of Chicago Names GM and CEO

John Mangum, executive director and CEO of the Houston Symphony since 2018, is to be the new general director, president & CEO of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, effective in the fall. He succeeds Anthony Freud, who announced last September that he would retire at the end of the current season after 13 years in the job.

Mangum, 49, has a distinguished career history in artistic planning with the major orchestras of New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. However, his academic background focused on 18^th-century Italian opera, having earned a PhD in music history from UCLA and focusing on the spread of that vintage of the artform into German-speaking Central Europe.

“I first fell in love with classical music and opera in high school,” he said in his comments about the new job, “and the art form has been a focus of both my personal and professional life ever since…I’m incredibly excited to work in partnership with Lyric’s Music Director Enrique Mazzola” and the company’s other artists and staff members.

Apart from his artistic credentials, Mangum has proven an adept fund raiser, having increased the Houston Symphony’s endowment by 50 percent and secured significant funding for the $60 million campaign to renovate its home venue Jones Hall, the first such alteration since1966. He also oversaw the search for a successor to Andres Orozco-Estrada as music director, as well as welcoming new Music Director Juraj Valcuha and new concertmaster Yoonshin Song. He is credited as well with launching programming initiatives around opera and new music, such as the neighborhood Student Concerts Series, which brings the orchestra’s musicians directly into the community to interact with students and invites those students to hear the orchestra on stage at Jones Hall.  Houston claims it is the largest school program of any major American orchestra, serving 53,000 students in more than 30 Houston-area school districts.

“During our search process, we intentionally looked for a leader who understands the classical music industry holistically, prioritizes the needs of artists, upholds artistic integrity, and finds ways to distill and drive connections between arts organizations and their communities,” said search committee co-chair Bryan Traubert.

Prior to Houston, Mangum was president and artistic director of the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, from 2014-2018.