Best Addition To A Three-Opera Season

A Fourth Opera From Austin Lyric Opera

Four cheers for Austin Lyric Opera, where the fours have been wild these past few years. First ALO added a fourth performance, turning Monday nights into an audience-friendly, not-so-highbrow night of operatic bliss for many of Central Texas' opera lovers who couldn't find a ticket in the days of the three-performance format. Now ALO has gone one better and added an entire opera to its season, bringing even more variety to its programming and practically lavishing opera lovers with options. This past season the sumptuous extra show was Carmen, joyfully produced in the City Coliseum. Next year ALO again offers four operatic productions that hail from strikingly different musical worlds: Gounod's Faust, André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire (yes, it's an opera, too), Puccini's The Girl of the Golden West, and Verdi's Rigoletto. Quite the quartet.

Austin Lyric Opera
901 Barton Springs Rd., 512/472-5927
www.austinlyricopera.org