Lyric Opera's Richard Pearlman dead at 68

CHICAGO, April 10 (UPI) -- The director of Chicago's Lyric Opera Center for American Artists, Richard Pearlman, has died of lung cancer at age 68.

Pearlman died while in a coma Saturday at Rush University Medical Center, two years after his cancer diagnosis, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Pearlman began training opera stars of the future at the center in 1995. Under his direction, the Lyric's apprenticeship program became one of the top four in the country along with those in Houston, San Francisco and New York's Metropolitan Opera, the Tribune said.

"Richard brought the Lyric Opera Center to new levels of excellence and renown, and no one in the country was a greater champion of young American singers or of American music," Lyric Opera General Director William Mason said in a statement.

Pearlman was director of the Eastman Opera Theatre at Rochester University's Eastman School of Music from 1976 until his 1995 move to Chicago.

He trained from 1960 to 1963 under four legends of opera and theater: Gian Carlo Menotti, Franco Zeffirelli, Luchino Visconti and Tyrone Guthrie, the Tribune said. His directing debut for the Washington Opera was the first U.S. staging of Berlioz's "Béatrice et Bénédict" in the 1964-1965 season.

Among his many directing debuts through the years was the first professional production of the Who's rock opera "Tommy" in 1991, starring Bette Midler, for the Seattle Opera.

His survivors include an aunt and several cousins.