Fired Up About Opera

Please fire Mark Swed. He has the best job in the world and the opportunity that so few of us has--to travel around to various opera companies--but all he does is complain about how the different companies are presenting the same operas (“A Generic ‘Falstaff’ Lacking in Sparkle From San Diego Opera,” Jan. 25).

Opera is an art form that communicates in its own unique language. There are only a handful of operas that can communicate that language to people who have no music education background or who are attending an opera for the first time. Those are the operas that tend to be presented the most often and receive the best attendance.

BRENT L. TRAFTON, Long Beach

*

The Pacific Opera’s performance of “The Flying Dutchman” may have been as good as Mark Swed’s review indicated (“Wagner Brought to Life,” Jan. 21). However, since I was forced to close my eyes and keep my head down for major portions of the second and third acts, I could not say.

I would recommend any director contemplating such displays in the future view them from all seats in the house. Having high-wattage lights aimed in one’s face is more conducive to a nagging headache than a pleasant opera experience.

LEE AYDELOTTE, Huntington Beach

*

Mark Swed’s snotty review of L.A. Opera’s “Madama Butterfly” struck me as wholly unjustified (“Letting Loose Yet Another ‘Butterfly,’ ” Jan. 12).

The notion that repeated offerings of this opera are somehow redundant is lost on me. Perhaps Swed goes to the opera all the time, but for the rest of us, “Butterfly” is a pretty choice example of the genre, and most folks I know have only seen it once or twice anyway. (My wife had never seen it before.) “Butterfly” is an opera that hits right between the eyes if it is done well, and in the L.A. Opera production the audience seemed to find it very well done.

NICHOLAS MEYER, Pacific Palisades