# Unwanted change of taste?



## Celloissimo (Mar 29, 2013)

I'm a great lover of opera, or at least I was. For the past few months, I was overwhelmed and busy, I've not had the time to sit down and simply enjoy an opera. I was once a Wagner, Verdi, and Janacek addict, but recently when I've been able to listen to opera, I don't get the same feeling. I feel like my mind keeps getting clubbed over the head with the long monotonous themes and excessive duration. The powerful singing, which I once adored, has begun to grate on me. I simply dislike opera now, which leaves me saddened as I respect it as one of the greatest art forms and it once brought me great joy. It's lost its magic. You could say I've developed some form of musical ADD.

Is there anything I can do, or is it simply an inevitable change in taste?


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## PeachlovinBari (Dec 7, 2013)

You said you've been busy recently, so maybe you just need a week or so to relax before you listen to an opera again.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Just leave it and listen to what you feel like. You only have one life and there are no "shoulds" when it comes to musical enjoyment. I had a 20 year hiatus from opera and then came back to it. During that time I explored and discovered a lot of other classical music that now I no longer listen to, but that's fine too.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

PeachlovinBari said:


> You said you've been busy recently, so maybe you just need a week or so to relax before you listen to an opera again.


Right, although I'd advise taking a few months off from opera. In the meantime, just go where the winds are taking you.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

1) Try discovering new great operas (opera composers?)/new great performers

2) Set up for some entirely different genre and persue it until you get sick and start missing opera. For example, this might be easily achieved if you will decide to familiarize youself with all Haydn string quartets, chronogically, day after day. 

3) Or maybe you just need a rest from music altogether


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Most people have limits on even their favorite things, like foods or music or actors. Listen to some good jazz, maybe some classic rock, whatever, maybe just non-vocal classical works that are shorter. Mozart piano sonatas?

In non-music things, I'm a huge Joycean and have enjoyed "Ulysses" for ages. Yet sometimes it's too much work and I spend my reading time with mystery thrillers (which I also write), or SF, or nonfiction entirely. And after a little time on the shelf, I'm back reading Joyce again.

Opera will be there waiting for you again, when you're ready.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

From the way you phrase it, it may be a relatively permanent shift in your taste. I'd suggest, if it is a matter of loving all things vocal, now investigating the rich and vast body of lied / chanson / canzone literature.

You may have been a 'sensationalist junkie' and have built up a tolerance where the old dose just doesn't do it anymore, or you may have just now gotten over that honeymoon phase, where of a sudden the gloss is off. 

If the latter, time to realize opera is about the most synthesized, ergo utterly synthetic, of the performing art forms, a lot of it is sensationally over the top and patently ridiculous unless you consciously accept that conceit.

Part of what needs doing is your assessing why you were listening to a particular repertoire -- nearly exclusively, it seems -- in the first place, i.e. what did it do that you sought out and enjoyed. Often, the more at the beginning, listeners seek out the mainly melodic, the grand, and the more directly accessible or obvious. Ask many a listener about some of those first loves, and what they think of them now 

Any way, a break is in order -- from music altogether, to non-vocal music or vocal music of a very different stripe.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

All sounds fine to me - time for a break or something new. 

If it's something new, you could try more contemporary opera where expression tends to be a bit more economical (but still retaining the direct and blistering potential of romantic opera) and there are different approaches to the vocal element. There's an excellent thread on here somewhere about great operas from 1960 onwards (I can never find them unfortunately) - but Sciarrino's Luci mie traditrici, Furrer's Fama, Eotvos's Three Sisters, or George Benjamin's Written on Skin might be worth a start


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

dgee said:


> AThere's an excellent thread on here somewhere about great operas from 1960 onwards (I can never find them unfortunately) - but Sciarrino's Luci mie traditrici, Furrer's Fama, Eotvos's Three Sisters, or George Benjamin's Written on Skin might be worth a start


Maybe you are referring to this thread:

http://www.talkclassical.com/26178-great-new-modern-operatic.html


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I have had a rather long (too long) period in my life that I did not care for music, any music, at all. Even though it has been my most important hobby since the early 70s, for 18 months in 2009/2010 I hardly listened to music at all. Fortunately my love for music returned, so there is a good chance your love for opera will return as well.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

PeachlovinBari said:


> You said you've been busy recently, so maybe you just need a week or so to relax before you listen to an opera again.


And I would add that perhaps the OP should, when he starts listening to opera again, not try to listen to a complete opera in one sitting but break it down into very brief "chunks," since what he was complaining about was the duration. I find that most things are manageable and even more enjoyable when taken in small doses. The main thing is not to _force_ yourself to start liking opera again, because then you'll just create in yourself more resistance to it.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Listen to what you feel like listening to.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

There is an ocean of fine opera from other than the Romantic period, earlier and later. Investigate those.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Celloissimo said:


> I'm a great lover of opera, or at least I was. For the past few months, I was overwhelmed and busy, I've not had the time to sit down and simply enjoy an opera. I was once a Wagner, Verdi, and Janacek addict, but recently when I've been able to listen to opera, I don't get the same feeling. I feel like my mind keeps getting clubbed over the head with the long monotonous themes and excessive duration. The powerful singing, which I once adored, has begun to grate on me. I simply dislike opera now, which leaves me saddened as I respect it as one of the greatest art forms and it once brought me great joy. It's lost its magic. You could say I've developed some form of musical ADD.
> 
> Is there anything I can do, or is it simply an inevitable change in taste?


You are probably going through the change of life---don't worry about it !!


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Celloissimo said:


> Is there anything I can do?


listen to Mayerbeer


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Try something lighter and more melodic like La Boheme. If you don't respond to that, then maybe you do hate opera.


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## david johnson (Jun 25, 2007)

not to worry. there is so much music to explore. try performing something yourself!


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Another thought from my personal perspective...

A few people here tend to idolize opera (especially from a "certain" composer, ha ha) in that they elevate it to an almost religious status. It's the same as pop music fans going berserk over the latest video. What is a wonderful, entertaining, and highly complex art form is seen as without flaw, without failings, if only you'd listen to the archivist 78s of a certain long-dead conductor and cast.

Well, gang, I've been there. I've sung real opera (albeit in a small local company), but genuine operas in the original language, costumes, sets, on stage, acting and all of it. And it's a ton of delight and hard work, but it's not perfect. Karen next to you has a cold and is just mouthing her chorus lines, Ed the baritone just blew a section of his recit, and I just tried to put the cap onto Susanna's head instead of Cherubino's (as Antonio), luckily that was in dress rehearsal.

If you see the flaws and humanity and mistakes, and then still accept opera, it's a lot more fun and easier to judge. Maybe you've set a fanciful goal of achievement for an opera and are always searching for that perfect performance or recording. It does not exist. Opera is a human venture and there are lots of bumps in the road.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

PetrB said:


> There is an ocean of fine opera from other than the Romantic period, earlier and later. Investigate those.


I think this could be solid advice.

Of course, I don't know about the particular case of our member Celloissimo. But, speaking in general terms, a sizable number of fans tend to listen to Opera as if it would have been born with Mozart, and died with Puccini. For this kind of fans, if they get a little bit overwhelmed by the same stuff, and apart from stop listening Opera, an alternative path of action can be to explore the art form. Before Mozart wrote "Don Giovanni" there are almost 200 years of history, and some wonderful music. After 1926, there is almost a century of history, and also some wonderful music.

Then again, if the issue is not with Romantic Opera, but simply a case of overexposure to the same pieces (a kind of ABC syndrome), it could be interesting to search for the less popular pieces from Romanticism.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

A family-based surfeit of Verdi, Puccini and verismo (er, make that rather Nuova Scuola [sp?] or whatever) led me to stay off opera for over ten years. I began learning about opera as an eight year old, from my father. He played them for me on the record player and took me to see all the clunky film versions of the 50s (Sophia Loren dubbing Aida, included) and I became used to discussing and listening with him every opera I came to like or just listen to. After he passed away in 2001, I had trouble listening to the operas we both loved. I could only analyze the virtues or flaws of a performance by imagining I was discussing it with his ghostly presence. I ascribed that to a lifetime habit of seeing opera through our discussions, not to mental illness. But still... What finally brought me back to opera was a change, as others have suggested, in operas. I picked up Monteverdi and Handel, which he never liked. And, finally and most significantly, Wagner, whom he admired above all others but which for many decades I couldn't "get". Now I can listen to my old favorites too, like La Forza, Don Carlo, Un Ballo, Otello, La Boheme, etc. I haven't played Pagliacci again yet. That was his favorite Italian opera for some reason, along with Boheme. But no big deal with that one for me.

Your opera block may not be as indurated and weird as mine was, but your way out of opera-aversion hell might follow a similar path. Look up excerpts of operas you've never heard before and give them a chance. And, as was recommended above, in short doses. Baby steps, baby steps back.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

katdad said:


> Another thought from my personal perspective...
> 
> A few people here tend to idolize opera (especially from a "certain" composer, ha ha) in that they elevate it to an almost religious status. It's the same as pop music fans going berserk over the latest video. What is a wonderful, entertaining, and highly complex art form is seen as without flaw, without failings, if only you'd listen to the archivist 78s of a certain long-dead conductor and cast.
> 
> ...


What you've said here is great, and I can relate to it. I first got into opera via the Met broadcasts and a couple of videos of Rossini comic operas. So opera for me was first of all a "fun, live performance" type of experience. (For example, I used to love it when on the Met broadcasts I could hear things like the singers walking around on the stage or props falling or being handled. It reminded me of the productions of plays and musicals I'd been involved in.) But my experience is probably atypical, because when most people think of opera, the first word that comes to their minds is probably not "fun"!


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## Oreb (Aug 8, 2013)

Wotan, _Das Rheingold_, Sc. 2 (Spencer's translation):

All who live
Love renewal and change:
That pleasure I cannot forgo!

Repeat as necessary


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Bellinilover said:


> (For example, I used to love it when on the Met broadcasts I could hear things like the singers walking around on the stage or props falling or being handled.


I still love that, even on CD recordings of live performances. In fact I praise live recordings above all because I'm interested in what artists (singers, orchestra, the conductor) can do when they don't have the luxury of multiple takes. The excitement of the moment adds the extra layer of fun, as surely opera should be, or else we'd be all masochists


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

If you are a young listener -- if you started at age 40 and are now 43 that is a young listener -- it is not uncommon to first be drawn to the more overt and highly (more obvious) dramatic musics. 

It is also not atypical to later find that your tastes shift, if not abandoning first loves, at least finding much more to like and love about the less overt and more restrained music (Classical) -- the more supposedly 'detached' Baroque (actually considered an era of Pathos as its fundamental aesthetic) or to move into the earlier 20th century repertoire.)

This may account for your lack of current response to the highly dramatic and overt repertoire of romantic era opera. Ergo, nose around in the other eras for other repertoire, use this time of little or no joy in the romantic opera, the romantic, to explore.


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## Celloissimo (Mar 29, 2013)

Thanks guys. I'm starting to get the feeling this is happening to me with music in general and as said, I might just need a break from listening altogether and give me some time to recharge. Though you did hit it right on the dot, I am a sensationalist junkie and after desensitization to the experience, the old dose indeed does not work. I've been really tense lately so I just need to sit back and relax.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Why not try exploring an opera that you have not seen before or are not very familiar with? Like.... Well, how about Fidelio?


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Bellinilover said:


> What you've said here is great, and I can relate to it. I first got into opera via the Met broadcasts and a couple of videos of Rossini comic operas. So opera for me was first of all a "fun, live performance" type of experience. (For example, I used to love it when on the Met broadcasts I could hear things like the singers walking around on the stage or props falling or being handled. It reminded me of the productions of plays and musicals I'd been involved in.) But my experience is probably atypical, because when most people think of opera, the first word that comes to their minds is probably not "fun"!


The perspective of actually performing in opera (I was mostly chorus and a few small roles), learning the libretto, studying the music, rehearsing with your chorus pals 3-4 times a week, is hard work. Add to that the staging, blocking, remembering your cues, hitting your spikes onstage, and the complexity has doubled.

But it's also a delight. Imagine the joy I had, standing onstage in the finale of Nozze, no chorus but 11 roles (I was Antonio), that gorgeous "Mozart Moment" of "perdono, perdono" from the Count... Or when I was in chorus for Rigoletto, and we nasty courtiers sing that reptilian "Ha Ha Ha!" laughing at Rigoletto's despair.

But like I say, being on the inside, you see flaws in production, plenty of 'em, including an entire set wall crashing down, missed entrances, singers blowing whole sections of solo. So you take a "come what may" attitude toward opera, and see it as it truly is, an amazing art form but due to its complexity, vulnerable to errors. Opera is an ideal but you never achieve that, you only give the best performance you can on that night.

Perhaps Cello has been too idealistic toward opera, put it upon a pedestal (as do many fans, especially putting their fave composer into sainthood), and then quickly grow tired of the music since it honestly doesn't offer the perfection that was first imagine. As you say, kick back, enjoy the music without burdening it with any unrealistic ideals or goals. Opera's an amazing art form but bottom line, it's created and performed by humans.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Why did people in the old times observe a period of fasting / Lent ? I guess that every person's taste is fading away when there is too much abundance of the same. Just imagine celebrating Thanksgiving everyday, one giant turkey stuffed full, another greasy monster &.. &.. &..until the end of time. The only way out is turning cold turkey, introducing radical abstinence for a certain period of time. 

I do experience the treatment of voices in opera as a kind of constantly 'going over the top', always heading from extreme to extreme. When I'm fed up with paying attention to these superhuman aspirations for which opera is known, I turn away from opera and go on diet. Just to let my taste recover. After some time however the forbidden fruit starts to make eyes on me..


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