Her Voice Is Heard

While I agree with part of Mark Swed’s review of L.A. Opera’s “Lucia de Lammermoor” (“A Canary in a None-Too-Gilded Cage,” May 28), the lackluster sets and the lack of energy between Enrico and Edgardo are forgotten precisely because of the one response that Swed disdains in his critique: our “irrational” response to the beauty of Sumi Jo’s voice.

By criticizing the very thing that makes opera special--its powerful appeal to our emotions, conscious and unconscious--Swed risks reducing a potentially transcendent experience to a laundry list of minor production flaws, and flattening out opera into a dry and merely intellectual experience.

LISA HAMILTON

Santa Monica