The 2010 season at Opera Theatre of St. Louis solidified the company's standing as one of the country's premiere opera festivals.

"We set out to have a very classic Opera Theatre season in terms of the mix and the artists featured, but also to branch out a bit, which is, in a way, also a classic Opera Theatre style, to reach out and surprise the audience," says general director Timothy O'Leary.

Both the Isaac Mizrahi "A Little Night Music" and the world premiere of Peter Ash and Donald Sturrock's "The Golden Ticket" helped the company meet another goal, drawing new audiences.

So did the opening production — the one that received the most performances — Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro." The non-subscription "Figaro" performance on June 12 sold more than 100 percent, a figure made possible by tickets that were turned back and resold. Both of this season's Young Friends events, one "Night Music" and one "Figaro," sold out. "Night Music," in fact, sold out for the run, with a total of 101 percent of tickets sold. Ninety percent of available tickets went for the entire six-week season.

Twenty-two percent of the audience was new this season, continuing a trend from last year. OTSL had its highest ticket revenue ever, even without increasing ticket prices and while offering special prices on tickets for children and teens to come to "Ticket." Total receipts were more than $1.8 million with a total of 24,956 tickets sold to buyers from 47 states and eight foreign countries.

O'Leary is eager to share the credit with his colleagues. "One of the healthiest phenomena (at OTSL) is that these kinds of results are completely a team effort ... there's a lot of wonderful enthusiasm."

"Charlie's Chocolate Party" took place at the "Ticket" matinee, and it was a smash hit, despite furnace-like temperatures. "The entire grounds and tents were overrun with children and their families, many of them people who clearly had never experienced OT before," O'Leary reports.

The music for "Ticket" has some "edge and spikiness to it." While some of the more traditional operagoers had a problem with that, none of the children did. "They approached it on its own terms, without any preconceived notions," O'Leary says.

There were spots where the score dragged, which O'Leary prefers to call "opportunities for cuts." Sturrock and Ash are working on those now, in preparation for its next outing at Ireland's Wexford Festival.

He believes that it all demonstrates "that opera is an art form whose appeal is growing in our culture; we as opera producers just have to keep finding ways to get new audiences to notice, become engaged and give it a try."

What other critics said

The 2010 season at Opera Theatre of St. Louis attracted its usual complement of critics from elsewhere. Interest was highest around "A Little Night Music," with its lure of Isaac Mizrahi's directorial debut and starry cast, and "The Golden Ticket." "Ticket" garnered feature stories on National Public Radio and in the Los Angeles Times, along with assorted reviews from all over.

Here's a sampling.

'The Golden Ticket'

George Loomis, writing for the Financial Times, wrote that "(Composer) Ash has produced a fun-filled score with a zippy, contemporary ambience that makes room for a tune or two you can remember and deft allusions to past operas," and praised "the uniformly strong cast," along with Timothy Redmond's conducting and the production itself.

The Dallas Morning News' Scott Cantrell was enthused about Act I, "a fanciful tale meets theater of the absurd meets opera. Sturrock's libretto bubbles along with fun rhyming couplets, and the music is surprisingly sophisticated. But by the second act, it feels like too much of a good thing. I kept glancing at my watch."

'A Little Night Music'

In the Wall Street Journal, Heidi Waleson admired the cast and the production alike. "No surprise that Mr. Mizrahi's costumes were enchanting; he also brought a light touch to the directing, never pushing the comedy into slapstick or the romance into bathos. It was all charming and very effective."

Cantrell found that Mizrahi's fairies-meet-Ingmar Bergman production "actually all worked, endearingly, abetted by a fine cast performing in the compact Loretto-Hilton Center at Webster University. I was told there was subtle amplification, but it was imperceptible. And in no Broadway theater would you hear an orchestra playing as beautifully as members of the St. Louis Symphony did under the devoted guidance of OTSL music director Stephen Lord."

'Eugene Onegin'

"Strong casting and a simple, elegant production," wrote Waleson in the Journal. "Soprano Dina Kuznetzova brought a beautifully dark lyric quality and dramatic intensity to Tatiana, though her Letter Scene was one-dimensional. Tenor Sean Panikkar's clarion, explosive tenor ignited the show. He brought an anger to Lensky, showing the violent flip side of a passionate nature, and made Christopher Magiera's chilly, correct Onegin seem even more repellent."

John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune noted the "minimalist" nature of the production, said good things about most of the cast and enthused about the tenor: "The most thunderous ovation fell, deservedly so, on Sean Pannikar, whose mellifluous, plaintive tenor made a showstopper of Lensky's despairing aria; this young man is one to watch."

'The Marriage of Figaro'

Von Rhein noted the presence of several alumni of Lyric Opera of Chicago's Ryan Opera Center, but he wasn't that impressed with anyone except baritone Edward Parks, the excellent Count Almaviva. He heard the conductor for the last three performances, Gregory Ritchie: he "paced the score fluidly, but coordination between the stage and pit was sometimes lax."

Loomis, this time writing for the website Classical Review, thought the production had bumpy moments, and while he liked the women, he was hard on the male characters: "As the page, Jamie Van Eyck's rather wiry voice lacks the right youthful bloom for the part, and her unflattering costume resembles pajamas. Edward Parks sings respectably as the Count, but his performance needs more dramatic focus. Christopher Feigum's voice is too light for Figaro, but he proves an engaging performer and makes words tell."