Show Boat docks at Lyric Opera of Chicago - chicagotribune.com

It's high time to lay to rest the shopworn canard that American musical theater works are somehow unsuitable for presentation by the big American opera houses. As a matter of fact, no piece in the cavalcade of American musicals has a more legitimate right to be taken under the wing of a major company like Lyric Opera than the landmark known as "Show Boat."

That's because only a theater such as Lyric's has the resources to satisfy the enormous musical and production requirements of the 1927 classic, with its tune-laden Jerome Kern score and finely-wrought book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein 2nd, based on the sprawling novel of Edna Ferber.