A Note About Sitting at Performances - USHERS

I wanted to take a moment and address a concern I have been hearing through the grapevine.

First, you all should know that we appreciate the time you give to the Opera, and we recognize that many of you have taken the time to build relationships with our patrons.  We want that to continue and we want to continue to provide you with opportunities for service at Sarasota Opera.

As you all know, the policy for ushers sitting at a performance is that ushers may not sit in a seat for which they do not hold a ticket.  For each performance, ten seats are set aside for ushers.  Tickets for those seats are handed out prior to those performances, and ushers who receive tickets for those seats must initial for them.

Additionally, as has been done in the past, if there are seats available just prior to the curtain (three to five minutes), I will ask the Box Office to turn those seats over to the ushers.  Ushers who receive tickets for those seats must also initial they have received them.  We did this on opening night of Rigoletto and to a much lesser extent at the recent Sunday matinee.

I have not broadly announced these additional tickets because they will not always be available, as we saw at the Sunday matinee.  However, we will distribute them as they come available.

Here is the explanation as to why we are doing this.  First, it's a simple matter of needing the revenue.  If we can sell a seat we are going to sell a seat.  Setting aside the ten seats that we do--something that is not done at the other organizations I have spoken with, by the way--costs us $720 per performance.  Unlike the Asolo, we do not have the standing room space for ushers to stand during a performance.  Unlike the Van Wezel, we cannot allow ushers to sit on the steps of the balcony during a performance.  So, we have these ten seats set aside and we open other seats as they come available prior to curtain.

Second, we have received complaints in prior seasons that ushers took seats that appeared to be available, but in fact were not.  When the ticketed patron--in one case it was a staff member of the Opera who bought a ticket (staff rarely get comp tickets)--asked the usher to move, that usher did not.  We have also had complaints of ushers climbing past patrons to get to empty seats inside the rows.  Whether these were isolated incidents or not, they are unacceptable.  Therefore we decided to better enforce the policy of not seating ushers if they do not have a ticket.

Our goal is to make sure that each usher gets to see at least one performance of the opera they are ushering. It does make it more difficult for us to do that if you only sign up for one performance of each opera or only give me one option for scheduling you.  In those cases, we make every effort to seat you, but can't guarantee it.  If an usher is not able to sit at a performance, we will make sure they get to at least see the dress rehearsal of that opera if that dress rehearsal is open.

Again, we cannot say it enough: thank you for what you do for Sarasota Opera.  We hope you see the enforcement of these policies as an effort to make everything fair for everyone who works with us.