Fire has always meant a little more in Chicago than nightmares of lapping flames. Here, it evokes rebirth, reinvention, a certain bootstrap-ism even amid daunting circumstances. How fitting, then, that fire welds together the works headlining the inaugural Opera Festival of Chicago, 150 years after that cataclysm stopped the city in its tracks.

You’ve got the smolder of clandestine smoke breaks in “Il segreto di Susanna,” a comic intermezzo by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (July 24 at the Athenaeum Theatre). You’ve got the roaring furnaces of hell in an “Inferno”-themed death-day recital for Dante Alighieri (July 28 and 29 at Artifact Events). And you’ve got the fateful burning of a pipe in Giacomo Puccini’s “Il tabarro” (Aug. 5 at Thalia Hall).