Saturday, June 6, 2009

Winner Announced for “Confessions of a First-Time Operagoer!”

After over 6,500 votes and a race down to the very last minute of the voting period, we are excited to announce the host of our new reality-style video series chronicling an opera-newbie’s experience at the Ring this summer. Meet Cassidy Quinn Brettler, a 19 year old Seattleite and student at Emerson College. If you didn’t see Cassidy’s audition video during this past week of voting, watch Cassidy’s contest submission below:






20 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  2. I find it incredibly sad that Seattle Opera continues to pretend that the vote was fair... Cassidy and other of the candidates cheated. The person with the most actual votes did not win, and the entire vote was a sham.. and Seattle Opera was alerted to this problem repeatedly and stood by doing nothing to fix the problem of multiple votes.. one person was able to vote thousands of times and that is exactly what happened. My respect for Seattle Opera is way down.

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  3. Wow, anonymous... how trite.

    Congrats to Cassidy and congrats to the Seattle Opera for doing something truly innovative to expand their reach. Looking forward to seeing the final show!

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  4. Agreed. I got a message on Facebook asking me to vote for Cassidy... and I don't even know Cassidy. I said this in a different thread, but I'll say it again - when's the last time you saw an Opera have something go viral on Facebook?

    This was a good thing for anyone who cares about this art form.

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  5. As a disinterested and objective Canadian observer, it's clear the winner didn't get the most votes.

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  6. I've attended SO pretty regularly, but I'm starting to wonder about their IT systems. Logged on to get Ring tickets this morning and the site was really slow and then the order wouldn't go through! After half-hour of trying to buy tickets and no result, it was pretty frustrating.

    Good to have publicity but the systems (surveys, ticketing, etc.) have to be able to handle it.

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  7. NOBODY CHEATED. Its just a documentary, not the presidential election. You lost respect for Seattle Opera over something like this? Well you clearly were never a fan before. GET OVER YOURSELF.

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  8. Great! They charged my account for tickets that I didn't receive. And all offices closed.

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  9. I agree that nobody cheated, Cassidy was able to round up a group of people willing to vote for her and to spread the word to their friends. That's not cheating at all. Frankly, by saying that she cheated you make yourself sound bitter over the fact that the person who you voted for didn't win. If you watched all the videos you know they were all very good and I'm sure all candidates would have done an awesome job. Let's just support the winner and have fun watching all of the behind the scenes events about this fabulous opera!

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  10. I agree with the last anonymous person. Cassidy is obviously very talented and deserved this, just as any other candidate would have. Stop being bitter and be happy for Cassidy-- she did nothing to "cheat", all she did was show her talent to the world and asked people she knew to vote for her.

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  11. Hallo, Felicia!
    Sorry to read about your troubles with electronic ordering. A healthier way to get tickets is to walk to a bus stop and eventuallhy take the 70 bus to John St. (direction of "univ.") and walk to the Seattle Opera ticket and other offices one block west; there you won't be charged for something you didn't get, because you'll se the tickets spew out of the machine before you hand over your money.
    AND:-- Walking is good for the health of your brain and the rapidity of your comprenension and reactions, per the Tufts Health and Nutrition News Letter (available on the Internet).
    Gute Gesundheit wuenscht alle SeattleOpera-goers,
    Win the Walker

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  13. Its kind of hilarious that people with no access to the site logs or any technical information regarding the voting process whatsoever are so easily convinced that the whole system is broken and all of the votes were fake. Everyone seems to be a fanboy who is throwing around the idea of scrips, when in actuality probably none of you even know what a script is.

    The results are in, she won fair and sqaure, done deal.

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  14. In response to the last Anonymous...
    I know there was cheating because I personally know the people who scripted for Cassidy.
    I'm glad she won with the script!
    I can't believe it worked!

    Great job Cassidy! Go be the best you can be!

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  15. Win,
    I couldn't go to the box office because tickets aren't being sold there til Monday morning and I'll be at work. I'm pretty sure the tickets are sold out by now.
    I don't think the online ticketing system should charge you if the transaction didn't complete. Maybe they can change that in their system or have someone available on the weekend that the tickets go on sale. Or maybe they could do a lottery for discount tickets which I think the Met does.
    I'm so burnt out on this now. Spent all morning yesterday dealing with the bank to get the charges reversed. It doesn't matter anymore but was kind of a bummer.

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  17. Whoever the most recent anonymous was... are you serious? If you really knew the people who "cheated" for her, you wouldn't go spreading that around like you were proud of it. Clearly someone who's bitter and is trying to make it seem like Cassidy's talent and networking didn't win her the position.

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  18. Oh, come on guys. I am truly a disinterested observer. I couldnt care less but, get real! Of course it is obvious that the candidates voted for themselves. They were able to vote as many times as they wanted to. The whole thing is a joke.

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  19. Also not a Seattle local, and strictly disinterested, but curious enough about the concept to watch all four videos when the voting was on.

    They each had strengths and certainly flaws, but Cassidy's entry totally lost me when she came out with the trite observation about Wagner being "very unique and interesting". For a broadcast student that's pretty sloppy and unimaginative use of language. And now I read that she had scriptwriters…? Double shame.

    And Greek dramas? Why am I not completely convinced that she's always loved to read these. (Nor, I suspect, the Norse sagas on which the operas are actually based. Sloppy research there, again not boding well for a journalism student or her scriptwriters.)

    But the thing that bothered me most was her obviously tin ear. Did no one notice the soundtrack to her video? I'm not objecting at all to the fact that the music wasn't opera, but to the fact that it was badly balanced and its overbearing rhythmic repetitiveness continually distracted from her spoken presentation. That kind of poor audio judgment and lack of musical awareness doesn't bode well for someone who's meant to be documenting an immersion in a musical art form.


    If it's true that it was possible for individuals to vote multiple times then, yes, I agree with those who consider the process (not necessarily the concept) a bit of a joke. The opera company definitely loses credibility in not taking care of something as simple as that.

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