Vantaggi
ALO puts on consistently great productions despite the economic recession. They attract wonderful artists, and provide a valuable art form for the community.
Svantaggi
The board and executive leadership choose to remain firmly entrenched in years of tradition and refuse to change anything about the way they actually do things, making it more difficult for the current employees to achieve their assigned goals. This is unfortunately an industry standard for opera. The company wants to reach new audiences but is resistant to any changes that might make this possible.
The ALO board has very little respect for the staff and is quite open about it (and there is no support for the staff from executive leadership regarding board relations), so consequently burnout, low morale, stress, and turnover are a recurring problem. The new ED is a great person and very enthusiastic about opera but is not a good manager; he burns employees out and has problems with boundaries (last minute requests after business hours with no advance notice and too little lead time, and then procrastinates to review or approve, no authority with the board and leaves staff out to dry, etc.).