1. The grand opera has really clicked with young people.

2. American bluejackets and marines are not expected to rival grand opera Barytones and tenors, but they are supposed to know how to sing “The Star Spangled Banner.”

3. Poorly staged and with only Joplin on piano accompaniment, it was "a miserable failure" to a public not ready for "crude" black musical forms—so different from the European grand opera of that time.

4. Besch was a semi-finalist for the 2012 Eleanor McCollum Competition at the Houston Grand Opera, one of the Rocky Mountain and Gulf Coast Regional Finalists for the Metropolitan National Council Auditions, placed in the Denver Lyric Opera Guild Competition, and was awarded the Harold Norblum Award through Opera Colorado.