Am I unusual to find opera excruciatingly difficult to listen to?

The duet the Pearl Fishers sung by Jonas Kaufmann and Dmitri Hvorostovsky has got to be the best version.

I have loved opera ever since I first heard Mario Lanza sing in some film, I must have been about 14/15, Puccini, Verdi, Wagner, just ❤️ them.

Whenever I go to the opera or watch it on a live feed, I do my homework first. I listen to the opera in the house when doing housework tasks or in the car, over and over. And I need to know the story.
Someone in my class at school became a professional opera singer, and I really didn't get it. It wasn't until Pavarotti and Italia 90, hearing that crescendo from Nessun Dorma again and again when the football came on, that I really found the beauty of opera. Daughter adores Carmen, none of the others, just Carmen!

Il Devo are good too----and easy on the eye. Allegro is one of my favourites.

No Pamela, you are not alone.

I gave up watching Morse, because of the overwhelming caterwauling of the opera noise that just got louder and louder.

Another here who can’t do jazz especially scat(?).

I find some opera very emotional - softy that I am. La Boheme sets me off as soon as Mimi loses her key and don’t get me started on Tosca!

Otherwise - quite happy with a bit of Motown, Dire Straits and Simply Red.

A lot of opera is pure snob value, being seen at the opera, for me it’s OK in small doses, much better in a language you can understand.

PamelaJ1 - the singer on that Italy programme was grim - I like opera, but she was grim!

Opera is a funny thing - it goes from seriously boring recitative to sublimely beautiful arias; from totally unbelievable story-lines to touching moments that make you want to cry. And when you see it live, the acting is usually excellent.

To follow an opera and enjoy it you do need to have the story well and truly under your belt before you start - most operas are not in English as most of the composers are Italian/German or other nationalities.

So, if I were you I would head for compilations of opera's best arias - they are popular for a good reason.

Try this achingly beautiful aria from Janet Baker: www.youtube.com/watch?v=44_1Jw9cT9E
It is sung by a woman watching her female lover sail away for good.

Baggs has it absolutely right. I find an operatic soprano really painful to listen to and therefore cannot enjoy opera. My loss, I am sure.

My dad was an opera fan and I really couldn’t see what the attraction was, but he couldn’t sit through a classical symphony in the same way that I could. I came late to opera, and have seen many live performances, but as someone said, there is opera and opera. Aida, Madam Butterfly, La Boheme, Hansel and Gretel - all wonderful; then you have Britten’s Peter Grimes (very dark), and Borodin’s Prince Igor, which some would say only has one good piece of music in it. I can only take Wagner in very small chunks, but there is an aria from Tristan and Isolde that brings me to tears however many times I hear it. Now there’s a love song!

watermeadow - vibrato can indeed be a horrible noise - I always want to shout "Oh for goodness sake, just pick a note!"

But not all sopranos are like that: Renee Fleming, Barbara Bonney, Soile Isokoski, and above all else Arlene Auger, who sadly died relatively young, but sings sublimely beautifully - no fuss, no wobble, just pure beauty: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ENObNHtelY ......wow!

To each their own. Personally, I cannot stand opera and I can add ballet to that list. However, I have many friends who find great enjoyment from listening to opera. It would be a weird world if we all liked the same thing.

My dad and his family played a lot of opera, when I was growing up I found it scary, I was glad when my parents embraced the music of the day when they discovered The Beatles, although we did still get the full pelt of opera rising up through the floor to our bedrooms upstairs from time to time

A while ago I discovered Puccini and fell in love with his arias so completely. I feel several things when I hear them, elation, tears and they make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I have seen a couple of his operas performed.

Having said all that, opera per se can be pretty tedious imo, and I can quite see why it's hated by some.

I remember being amused when some famous person said of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" a great song completely ruined by Luciano Pavarotti's operatic interlude. Kind of knew what they meant, at the same time think Pavarotti had an amazing voice.

I married an amateur light opera singer - G&S and the like - who went serious on it. My preference was classical music.

Yet over the years, I have grown to love and appreciate opera. I do think if you are coming to it from no experience, you need to start by paddling in the warm waters of operetta and one or two of the most popular operas; Offenbach's Belle Helen or Orpheus in the Underworld, really witty clever operas, or reall weepies like La Traviata, Madame Butterfly or La Boheme. Or, my favourite, Rossinis Cendrillon (Cinderella) a wonderful take on this fairy story

The story will always be in the programme and every professional opera house I know has surtitles (the opposite of subtitles as they are above the proscenium arch) so you know what they are singing, no matter what language they are singing.

It was Morse that first introduced me to opera - I loved some of it so much I found out about it and went out and bought cds to play in the car, and we've been listening ever since. We know a little bit more now about opera, but mainly who we like singing and who we don't.
And the opera music introduced me to ballet - when the Northern Ballet performed Madame Butterfly near me I was given a gift of some tickets. Between the music and the dance that evening made my whole year.

I have learnt to love opera not by listening to recordings, but to being there in the theatre for the whole experience. Once you have seen a performance, you can listen to a recording and visualise the action and characters, but it's never the same thing.

I think you're right annodomini. So much better to be there.

Also, I have to say (though i didn't see the TV show in question), that I'm not a fan of anyone just bursting into song in say, a travel or cookery show, whatever the musical genre.

Just taste differences. I love some opera, the gloomier and darker the better, can't be doing with the light and frothy.
I'm not a huge fan of random bits of opera singing though, I like the whole, immersive experience.

I agree

I love all the sopranos you mention Luckygirl but for me the one that trumps them all is Cheryl Studer. Her articulation is absolutely faultless.

I don't like opera or classical music. Daughter tells me I have no culture. Give me rock music any day! But to each her own.

Opera is not my thing at all but one of my friends mother , a retired opera singer,singing along to ELO as she did her vacuuming as if it was an aria was pretty amazing!

I watched the Young Chorister of the Year semi-finals on Songs of Praise yesterday. One of the singers had a voice that was completely unsuited to choral singing and John Rutter pointed out she should try and tame her vibrato.

Barbara Bonney, my all time favourite soprano, has the perfect balance. IMO

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rowFKQaS8GI

Just posted this on the Strictly thread by mistake.

Serves me right for having too many windows open at the same time.