Mr. Austin Rucker certainly has a way with words. In any other article, I would find his writing style amusing and enjoyable.

However, in response to his Feb. 9 review of the Meadows opera “Cosí fan tutte,” I would like to suggest that an opera review is not an appropriate place for him to present his personal views on Valentine’s Day, women and the stereotypes of SMU students.

While the title of Mr. Rucker’s review implies that the performance is an exciting way to spend an evening, his first paragraph claims that the performance is a “sleazy display” that you can “drag” your girlfriend to without having to buy her anything for a “capitalist crock of garbage” holiday, Valentine’s Day.

Though I encourage people to attend the opera, I hope any girlfriend would decline such an “invitation” by somebody who claims to care for her and enjoys spending time with her. Valentine’s Day is an optional holiday – those who want to participate may, and others who are not romantically involved on that day are politely requested to look the other way.

The purpose of an opera review is to give others a chance to decide whether or not the opera is worth seeing. Thus, the intended audience for the review is not a select group of hormone-driven young men.

The repeated allusion to the “busty broads” in the performance is not only insulting, it’s sexist. Perhaps it still escapes the notice of some men, but most women prefer to be admired for their minds and personalities, not their breasts.

In this case, the women especially desire to be admired for their voices. Not everybody has to enjoy opera to agree that opera singers spend years developing their voices and singing techniques.

Therefore, to describe sopranos’ voices by saying they “strike like a slap in the face” is not even close to being a compliment to the women who work so hard to perfect their style. When Mr. Rucker insists that the opera is like “Prince at the Super Bowl halftime show with a lower budget and more girls,” I have to wonder if he even saw the opera or bothered to stay for the whole performance.

There were three main female characters.

Anybody who attends SMU knows that a high percentage of the student body enjoys drinking and partying. Even though I am not a part of that group, I would not go so far as to call my peers “idiots” for preferring that kind of night life over seeing an opera, though I would like to encourage my fellow students to try something new by attending a Meadows performance, especially if they enjoy live music shows.

However, opera is not a holding cell for inmates to sober up in. Mr. Rucker’s description of the Sunday afternoon show as the ” ‘I’ve got a hangover and need a dark place to relax’ matinee” is entirely inappropriate. An opera performance is absolutely not a place to go when trying to recover from a hangover – such an action insults the hard work of the performers, musicians and others who worked to create the opera.

There is a set of manners for audiences of opera that differs dramatically from rock concerts: being drunk or hung over, rowdy or in any way distracting to the performers or other audience members would be like scribbling on the Mona Lisa with a permanent marker.

Yes, “Cosí fan tutte” was written by Mozart in a day when romance was a very common and classy subject, but not everybody looks down on love today.

Thank you, Mr. Rucker, for your positive review, but next time please review the performance with the same “class” you claim to admire.

And by the way, the opera was fantastic.

About the writer:

Amy Israeloff is a sophomore, music performance and education major. She can be reached at [email protected].