As a college student, I found this show entrancing, but I'm appalled at how little the company is doing to draw in a young audience.

If I have a choice between taking a group of six friends to a club with an $8 cover charge to see nationally known Indie talent or dragging them to a show where the "cheap" student seats are $20 ... well, we just lost six potential new opera fans.

Dear LOB: Emulate Mexican opera houses and get a ten buck standing area for EVERYONE, including the scary unwashed non-student youths, with heavy e-mail promotion to students at UB, which is right next door*. Or wither and die. Your choice.

*OK, fine, you can give them a dollar discount if that's the only way you can get the UB people to let you into their e-mail list. Just find some way to get them coming. It also wouldn't hurt to confirm the tantalizing rumors I'm hearing. Are you really commissioning an opera called "Stringer Bell?"

I never thought I write a comment on an opera blog, but here goes. I thought Marguerite's transformation in the jewel scene from an achingly adorable innocent young woman to what she became was done too suddenly. The badinage between her two sides was unconvincing IMHO.

Hope I'm not too late to encourage more to go to the performance this afternoon. The singing was excellent across the board, but I thought Roberts as Siebel was especially memorable. How well the smaller roles are sung is a measure of how strong the company is. That they were able to find such singers for each role is a very good sign. I missed the other two operas, but if this is a measure of where the new company will go, we are in good shape. I'll be back for next season.

Please forgive the delay in posting your comment. I had a bit of a personal emergency Sunday that lasted well into Monday. TIM

April 23, 2012

I guess we all see and hear things differently… I liked what I heard at Baltimore Opera’s Faust. I was not as enthusiastic as you were, I miss the elegance of French delivery exemplified in modern times by the likes of Alfredo Kraus and Nicolai Gedda [of the non French]… But as much as opera is singing it is also staging and acting, and the Faust production we had to endure was probably one of the worst things I have seen in much more than recent memory. I kept on getting the impression that the creator of this production was out to prove to the world just how clever he could be… and Gounod’s sweet, melodic and superficial music does not lend itself to a lot of interpretation. Faust is, recognizing its limitations, a very beautiful piece and I really wanted to like it –the singing saved the night but for this listener just barely as the staging was so full of gimmicks, cleverness and and just bad taste..

I saw the Sunday afternoon performance and agree with you about the musical aspects. The setting that the opera was forced into is another matter. As soon as the curtain rose I knew what we were in for when I saw large words such as SIN, LOVE, and OLD AGE on the backdrop, placed there to help us understand the story in case we didn't get it. The final scene in the mental ward encouraged laughter rather than emotional uplift. (Since when do people in mental wards walk around with IV's, and nurses wear high heels and red stockings?) At several points I closed my eyes and simply listened to the music. I have no problem with rethinking operas but none of this made any sense within the original context of the story and only served to distract one from the greatness of the music.

In a word this Faust was awful. The highlight of the Friday production was the discovery that so many had left before the start of the third act that there was no wait to exit the parking garage.
Opera is a visual experience. One should not be required to close their eyes to enjoy the performance.
.I am truly sorry that, for her first Opera, we took our daughter to see this misguided event.