Lyric Theatre @ Illinois Production Records, 1969-2016 | The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music

The University of Illinois' School of Music founded Lyric Theatre @ Illinois program in January 2014 as a comprehensive music performance program embracing a broad continuum of opera and musical theatre techniques to help students to prepare for the professional artistic singing, acting, and movement  demands of the 21st-century musical stage.  Since its founding the Lyric Theatre Program mounts three fully staged productions of musical theatre and opera each year that is performed by students in the University's Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.  In addition the program produces numerious small-studio opera workshop scenes as hands-on learning projects.

The Lyric Theatre Program is a continuation of the University's Opera Theatre educational program which began in the early 1970s under the direction of Tom Schleis and the School of Music vocal faculty.