Late seating isn’t the problem — boring lobbies are.

In my 40 years as a passionate opera fan, and my last 15 working in this high-strung industry, I have made a lot of compromises. I’ve made peace with perfume. I’ve made peace with patrons who unwrap a cough drop precisely during a delicate messa di voce, one crinkle at a time. And, with great effort, I have made peace with bangle bracelets — a phenomenon that still baffles me. Are all of these people frustrated percussionists?

But there is one problem I have not made peace with, and do not intend to: late seating.

Every opera company has a policy, and every policy is a small monument to institutional anxiety. Some companies hold a firm line, banishing latecomers to a folding chair in the lobby, watching Act I on a fuzzy screen with an even fuzzier speaker, as though attending the opera was a parole violation. Others let people trickle in mid-aria, disrupting everyone around them, as though the downbeat was merely a suggestion.

I am a firm believer in the maxim that if you’re on time, you’re already late. That’s not a debatable point; that’s just correct.

But we would still like these people to enjoy their experience.

During my 2017–2018 season as director of audience experience at Austin Opera — a one-year position funded by an OPERA America Innovation Grant — I spent months studying hospitality within and outside the opera world, most notably in partnership with the Four Seasons Hotel Austin. I learned that great hospitality companies do not simply tolerate a guest’s arrival — they design for it. They make arriving early not a chore, but an enjoyable addition to the visit.

Opera companies, by contrast, often treat the pre-show experience the way a DMV treats a waiting room: functional, joyless, and something to be endured.

There are plenty of ways to fix this issue that have less to do with money we don’t have and more to do with imagination we haven’t used. Open the house earlier. Serve local beer, not warm chardonnay from a plastic cup. Put a rotating art exhibit in the lobby that speaks to the production onstage. Host a happy hour. A singles mixer. A sing-along. Anything with a pulse.

And none of this should be reserved for a company’s biggest donors. Every single patron deserves to feel like their evening started the moment they scanned their ticket, not the moment the curtain rose. Sell this in your season brochures and your marketing emails. Make the pre-show hours — and intermission, too — feel like part of the magic, not just a prelude to it.

Do all of this, and I promise: People will arrive early, happily, and in droves.

Just, please — for the love of Verdi — don’t sell bangle bracelets in your gift shop. ■