Austin Lyric Opera

I’ve seen recordings of Metropolitan performances of Pagliacci and watched countless versions of it from the 50s on. I absolutely adore the story and have seen some gut-​wrenching versions of it over the years.
So I had reasonably high expectations when I bought tickets to see it on opening night a few weeks ago. Regardless, I was completely blown away. All of the actors’ performances were stellar and the orchestra totally crushed it. (People regularly use «totally crushed it» to describe fine arts performances, right? That’s totally a thing.)
Totally awesome for them to subtitle performances. I can see why people wouldn’t like that, but I love how accessible it makes the opera to the masses. More effort should be made to do things like that!
(I’ll add another star once I see something else but I can’t justify that on just one time.)

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to the Long Center (as in pre-​renovations) and was impressed with how much better the center is now than before. Definitely a good venue and better than Bass Hall.
Saw La Traviata and was happy with the performance, although while very solid, was not quite up to par with opera companies in more metropolitan cities. Also — would love to see a longer season with more than three performances. However, this coming year (25 anniversary) has promise with three very good operas — it’s making me seriously consider season tickets!
If you like opera — I would definitely recommend going.

I’ve enjoyed every opera of theirs I’ve seen (La Boheme, L’Etoile, Rigoletto). I will be going back for as much as I can afford. They often run really great deals for some shows. Their regular prices are reasonable for opera, but it would be nice to see better student prices under $ 20 that didn’t involve waiting until the last minute for student rush. Makes for fun dates. Would be cool (though weirdly innovative for an opera company) to offer blind date tickets where they match you up with a date where you could choose the age range and gender.

Got invited to the Long Center last night for ‘La Boheme’ and I was expecting one of many opera experiences where I act like I know what is going on but in reality… Not so much.
This time it was different. — Wanna know why?
Subtitles! — Austin’s Opera has fricken subtitles this changes everything for me. — I overheard some folks saying that the subtitles change the experience and that this isn’t the way Opera was meant to be experienced.
Well… I disagree. — This is definitely the first time I’ve been able to stay awake and alert through an entire Opera and I’m a fan of ALO’s approach.
Also worth noting, ALO is the only Opera in the world that has a music school (Armstrong Community Music School) built in as part of it’s mission. If last nights performance is an indicator of whats to come, I’d say we are about to start turning out some serious talent into the world. Nice work guys.