Isn't it romantic?

A friend sends this note about last night's designatedly young and non-gay Met singles event:

Singles night at the Met is three girls to one guy, and when I looked at the mingling area from the balcony of family circle there were a lot of balding guys, not that they have any control over that problem. Just an observation.

(An old post on the Met's initial foray into this territory -- featuring the same problem! -- is here.)

Of course, there was an opera performance, too. Boheme, to be exact.

I thought Samuil was very good, and Kovalevska was talented, but she isn't a very charming Mimi. I forgot that Villazon was Rodolfo, and during the first act, thought, who is this guy that just got out of opera school, 1/2 the time he can't project over the orchestra. When his groupies applauded enthusiastically, I thought, WTF? And then I looked at my program and saw who it was.

Singers aside, I wonder why La Boheme was the opera picked: it seems to me an opera better appreciated in the light of a past love than a future one. (Compare, say, Elisir, or Meistersinger -- though of course the latter's far too long for this sort of thing.) Of course, opera romance usually ends badly; wherever the art's reputation as a "romantic" pastime may come (I suspect it's to do with the general fact of women liking it more than men), I have a hard time seeing a basis for it in what's usually on stage.

More to the point, I doubt Boheme is a piece that will particularly draw single men. If gender imbalance is a recurring problem in these things, why not adjust for it?

Finally, it seems that the Met actually has adopted or anticipated Maury and Jonathan's joke by making the season's second Jenufa a singles event. What the heck?