By George Loomis [Financial Times, 7 October 2010]

For its opening production of the season, Lyric Opera of Chicago followed the oddly fashionable trend of engaging a theatre director with no prior experience in opera. But Barbara Gaines has learnt a thing or two in nearly 25 years at the helm of Chicago Shakespeare Theater and stages Verdi’s Macbeth with few, if any, of the hallmarks of a novice.