To not enjoy opera?

[Star555]

I love classical music but simply cannot stand operas in their entirety. Some songs are certainly magnificent vocal tours de force (like the Queen of the Night song in The Magic Flute, and the Flower Duet in Lakme). But for the most part operas are just hours of unnaturally high-pitched, incomprehensible singing (often people singing over each other and creating quite a cacophony, hard to understand the words no matter what language they're in, and having to look at surtitles is distracting) that isn't pleasing to the ear, barring one or two memorable songs per opera.

I say this as someone with years of classical music training and as a lover of symphony orchestra concerts, choral and solo singing, dramatic theatre and musical theatre. I will gladly sit through entire symphonies or Shakespeare plays or ballet performances or musicals. But entire operas I find intolerable!

I agree. My DH loves it and can sit through the whole Ring and all the rest of it; I much prefer to pick out my own elements that I like best.

Some are easier than others though; I liked Madam Butterfly and La Boheme; am not really in to Wagner. Clearly I’m a cultural lightweight

"I don't like operas" is like saying "I don't like concerts" - meaningless unless you mention the kind of music you are talking about. You might hate heavy metal concerts but that doesn't mean you will hate a piano concert.

Similarly, I wouldn't sit through a modern or even romantic opera but love an opera by Handel, Purcell, or Rameau, for example.

Offenbach, Puccini, and even Mozart operas bore me but music like this or this touches my soul.

@CoteDAzur I'm the exact opposite of you.
Love Puccini, would be bored by your two examples.
We're all so different.

Matilda the Musical has to be the worst thing I've ever sat through with The Greatest Showman a close second!

"YANBU not to like opera in the same way some people don't like jazz, or hiphop, or country. It's a musical style"

No. Opera isn't a musical style. It is a form of musical theater, which can be used to perform different musical styles like Baroque or Classical.

[quote Oneeyeopen]@CoteDAzur I'm the exact opposite of you.
Love Puccini, would be bored by your two examples.
We're all so different.

Matilda the Musical has to be the worst thing I've ever sat through with The Greatest Showman a close second![/quote]
My point exactly. We all have our taste in music and would probably enjoy opera in that style.

Given OP's training in and love of different musical styles, I can only imagine that she hasn't been watching operas of the kind of music that she loves.

Yes, it's 'unnatural' in the sense that operatic voices are trained voices. However, the style developed because they needed to project their voices throughout a large opera house, with no microphones. Done well, it's fantastic IMO.

Pop music started as authentic but these days is of course mostly very unnatural, autotuned, processed, edited, amplified and the rest.

I can't often understand what's being sung in foreign languages either, but have realised it helps to Google the plot beforehand

I find the current vocal trend in pop music where young girls with clear and light natural voices try to sing in a strange guttural way very unnatural.

In comparison, lyrical singing is more natural in the sense that it allows the natural register of the singer's voice to come through. If you need to sing at a higher volume, without a microphone, you can't do it in a range that is not naturally yours. Try it and you will see that your volume drops as you go down the scale after a certain point. The only reason why female pop singers generally sing at an alto range, which is not natural to most young women, is because they are singing at a low volume into a microphone just centimeters from their faces.

Of course it's not unreasonable. We all like different things, it's what keeps the world interesting.

I love some kinds of classical music but not others. You can't just say you 'like classical music' because there's such a wide spectrum.

Some arias are lovely, but as a whole meh

And we have a copy of La Boheme directed by Baz Luhrmann at the Sydney Opera house which is superb. Chiefly because the main characters are the 'right' age, instead of ageing tenors or sopranos looking too old to be believable.

@Fernie6491 I saw this production at the SOH when it was on. It was spell-binding!

I am not an opera expert but saw quite a few when I was younger. I have enjoyed operas by Puccini, Verdi, Mozart, Strauss and Bizet, and didn't enjoy Rossini, Handel or Schoenberg.

What I really cannot stand is Gilbert & Sullivan!!

I love some operas (La Boheme, Carmen and Rigoletto especially) and dislike others (Magic Flute, Cosi Fan Tutti, Madam Butterfly) as whole works but like individual arias or choruses.

Seems no different to people saying they like 60s/70s music but don't like the Stones.

@florababy84 I saw this production at the SOH when it was on. It was spell-binding

Wow, very jealous!

I cant stand the vocal gymnastics type opera singing. I do love the sound of a Welsh Male Voice Choir though.

@takingmytimeonmyride

I've on,y been to the opera once. I fell asleep. That tells me all I need to know. At least I got free tickets so I didn't spend money on a nap.

I fell asleep in Phantom of the Opera, I had tried to persuade OH not to go back in after the interval drinks but being a Yorkshireman we'd paid for tickets so we were going back in! It would be a dull world if we all liked the same things.

Hmm..perhaps I ought to think harder about which operas I particularly disliked the most, which I thought were not as bad overall, etc. and find a pattern to identify which composers I might prefer. I've watched a lot of different ones though -- Mozart, Purcell, Verdi, Britten, Wagner, Gounod, etc. and also some operettas (not Gilbert and Sullivan though...perhaps I should give them a try) but I don't think I had particularly strong preferences/dislikes.

I always read the plot/libretto beforehand to know what's going on. I think part of the problem, besides the unnatural/often cacophonous/boring stretches of music, is that the libretto texts are often so stupidly childish and immature, lacking the complexity and depth of the original works they are based on. For example, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas opera dilutes the real story/characters in the Roman epic Aeneid and is, frankly speaking, disrespectful to the original characters. Opera versions of Shakespeare's plays are similarly ridiculous and disrespectful. So I think I tend to see these operas as feeble imitations of classic works that are watered down and sentimentally exaggerated to pander to the masses of the composers' time. Even "original" operas like The Magic Flute are ridiculously soppy and childish -- the hero and heroine are in love without even having met and spoken to each other? Seriously?

I work for an opera company 🤣. I’m in the orchestra not a singer though.

Totally fine of course to not like a genre!

FWIW I LOVE playing Wagner but I’m not sure I could sit through a whole Wagner opera though! Luckily there are many fans and they usually sell out.

I do find it incredibly powerful sometimes,and it can easily make me cry if the singers are also amazing actors. And some of it leaves me cold,I do think there’s something for everyone but not everyone can afford to try them all.

Blimey, from your update I think you might be overthinking this. Either enjoy the music and emotion or don't. Marriage of Figaro is what got me on board. Maybe just listen to it don't watch it. Actually it was Morse that changed my mind, hearing that in the background in his house.

I'm the same, i can't stand opera (or jazz for that matter).

If I had one wish that would come true it would to be an Opera singer. I have loved it since I was a child child as my grandparents had a record of famous arias. La Traviata is my favourite which I know is seen as a bit populist but it literally moves my soul. The prelude is sublime. I listen to it pretty much everyday.

@Sleepingdogs12 Marriage of Figaro is also the opera that made me interested to explore this genre and see if I like it or not! Mind you, it was a university student production with the song lyrics in English, and I knew some of the singers personally, and I was sitting in the very front row and could catch every word, so it was a very different experience from seeing a professionally-staged opera production.

My mum has always loved Puccini, and I never thought much of it, although I love plays and dance. Then a couple of years ago she took me to see Tosca at the Royal Opera House and I really enjoyed it. I think I was expecting a silly convoluted Shakespeare style plot, but the plot was surprisingly linear and clear, and I found it all very accessible. I've since seen and enjoyed Boheme and Butterfly too. I also watched a weird modern production of Carmen online in the first lockdown, from the Berlin opera, and enjoyed that too.

I finished watching The Magic Flute yesterday (Met Opera on demand). Loved the stagecraft, costumes, etc. but sorry to say the style of singing and superficial (and very sexist) plot didn't improve my attitude towards the genre.

Nobody likes it, OP. Same as jazz and olives.

@Apuskidoofus ha ha.
I like all 3.