My first reaction to the opera was "What language are they speaking?! Why isn't it Russian?!" I was actually looking forward to understanding what was being said at the performance. I suppose romance languages are pretty popular among theatre. And even if they are speaking English, there's always an accent, probably British. But I digress. As a lot of you guys said, the background was a depressing gray and was simple yet effective. It served the purpose to show the bleakness of the prison and how it's the polar opposite of luxury. I liked how the same background was used for many different situations and it fit for all of them. I prefer that there actually be a detailed background because my eyes tend to wander and I like to examine the little things making up the stage. I know this was an opera and not a play so I suppose this is the norm. Luckily, this didn't detract from the overall play.

Like the show at BAM, after getting past the fact that the singing is in another language, I actually liked the fact that there were subtitles. That way I caught everything that was being said and it helped keep up with what was going on. And some of the dialogue really resonated like "There is only one omnipotent God. You are only Major by the grace of the Czar." This illustrated the mindastate of many prisoners who still held their faith in God. Despite the Czar effectively ruling nearly every aspect of their lives, there is still only one divine authority. It also helped them keep their pride because they had a retort for the guards who thought they were superior to them as criminals.

As for the music and singing, as everyone has said, it wasn't the stereotypical opera with a lot of meaningless, long notes in an absurd vocal range. But I wasn'te expecting that anyway, so it wasn't a big deal for me. I didn't really think about the singing because I was paying attention to the dialogue. The music I thought was appropriate and I appreciated it; it didn't catch me off guard. I thought it fit the opera and the scenes.

I liked the theater itself. It wasn't overly extravagant (though apparently nice enough for Meryl Streep). I looked around the place and found this on the lower level.