Do you like Opera?

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although it's not strictly an opera, i'd love to see a live performance [with supertitles, of course] of "Peer Gynt." such a bittersweet nordic winter of the spirit.

This.

I like opera. I like ballet more though.

No not really.

Opera is singing taken to the most overdramatic form and theater taken to the most obscure and strange...kinda like progressive rock made visual.

My 7yr old daughter attends classes run by Scottish Opera, every Saturday. They just sings songs, do some arts & crafts, learn some Italian vocab, a bit of drama, etc. So, my husband go to their production studios every Saturday and wait for her in the cafe. You'd think we were opera fans and that's why we got our daughter involved at such an early age. But, no. We all love music. I heard about the class, so decided to give it a go and she fitted in right away. We'd never been to an opera until the end of last year. It was a brand new one, 'The Elephant Angel', written and performed by Scottish Opera. It was short and aimed at families, so we all went and had a great time. The set was fantastic, as were the costumes and the singing. As for the music, well it wasn't really my cup of tea, but it wasn't awful and didn't distract me from my enjoyment.

So, I decided that my husband and I should try an adult opera. We booked tickets for 'A Midummer Night's Dream', being performed by the students at the Conservatoire here, in conjunction with Scottish Opera. If anything, I expected a spectacle. But, the set was totally weird. There were a couple of wooden boxes, which were used like bunk beds. There was no indication that the drama was happening in a forest. The costumes were nice enough, but not really how I imagined they'd be and not elaborate (I've been in Scottish Opera's costume dept and most of them are fantastic). But, the 'music' was strange. There were no distinct songs and no melody to speak of. The notes made no sense. They were just up and down, all over the place, not in a way that could be described as 'tuneful'. Some of the score was atmospheric, but when the singing started I was just confused by why he had chosen this note instead of that, etc. The performances were very good and I could see that they were great actors and singers, but their raw material, i.e. Benjamin Britten's composition, was mournful. The 3rd act was funny and I enjoyed it very much, but after 3 hours of that nonsense, I was glad to get out. The one consolation is that I don't have the music playing in my head over and over, as nothing was memorable enough for that.

Anyway, I've been to loads of musicals and, at the interval, people tend to have smiles on their faces and ladies have a chat in the toilets about it. There was complete silence in the ladies, but I'm not sure if that was because of the make up of the audience or if they were all stunned. I'm wondering if this is the norm with operas, or if we were just at a particularly bad example of one. My husband says he'll never go to another.

I do, I love it! I think that a lot of people who say they don't like opera haven't really heard that much of it. I know my parents downright abhorred opera until I actually made them listen to some good ones, then they fell in love! Previously they had only heard the prototypical and all-too-well known italian operas that you hear in all the movies/TV. My favorite by far is Handel's Rinaldo, but Monteverdi comes in a close second for me as an opera composer, he's amazing. I better shut it now, before I get too carried away and start rambling lol!

Here's one of my favorite moments in opera:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YJIJlGkUJw[/youtube]

I like the clip you've posted. I hope what I saw on Saturday was just a bad example, because I would like to give it another go. I'll have to find someone else to go with next time, however.

Mummy of Peanut, try some great classical examples like Carmen or Aida. The music is more traditional and it's like a play where everybody sings instead of talking. A lot of ice-skaters use music from Carmen in their routines and it's actually pretty accessible story-wise, too. Carmen and another French opera, Les Contes d'Hoffmann were special interests of mine during childhood. I memorized entire roles and played dress-up performances of them and tried to get all the other neighborhood kids to quit riding bikes and playing kickball and play opera instead.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty tone-deaf and poor, so I didn't become an opera singer as an adult.

Enjoy the music and the browser but wish the vote didn't sound like a California surfer with a low iq.

I have a huge digital classical music collection containing roughly 650 composers and 3,315 albums, the most being 106 by Franz Liszt and Mozart close to it with 101 albums. None of them are operas. Apart from Tannhauser and Carmen I'm not the biggest fan of the genre. The one opera I've ever seen live was Tannhauser during my Wagner phase. I'll listen to overtures, even make albums from them, but I currently don't have any. I even hate it when composers introduce lied (songs) into their symphonies. The screeching vocal sound just irks me. I don't know why.

I have to agree 500%... and my mom is a retired music professor who just loves opera. I might add that it is always in a foreign language that many people can't understand. What is the point in that.

the true opera lover goes to night school and becomes sufficiently fluent in italian, spanish, french and german to follow the operas he or she loves, just like the opera singers who themselves mostly went to language school to learn all those languages. the typical opera singer is polylingual and polycultural.

Try some Handel or Purcell operas, quite a few that are 100% in English! And I'll comment that opera is certainly not my favorite genre in classical music, but I still do truly enjoy quite a few of them. I feel that operas are so incredibly varied in style and substance that it's hard to make a blanket statement saying you either like or dislike them completely! Here's a piece from one of Handel's lesser-performed English operas. Sorry, anything to do with classical music gets me all worked up lol!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF615Bo5I0I[/youtube]

...video game opera. >.> <.<

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDtDvi8OUY8[/youtube]

Some...I am not a big fan. I have a few faves that I listen to. Phantom of the Opera is my fave and a lil obsession, but that is pretty much it for the most part.