# What draws you to opera over non-classical music?



## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

as before, there isn't really a correct answer (hell, maybe you like both. you can explain that too)


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

It doesn't. I love Jazz too and Country and Pop. Just don't give me Acid Rock.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

It does not for me either. If I had to give up either my opera CD's or my combined pop/rock CD's collection, opera would be toast.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

I'm not sure I understand the question. When you say non-classical music, I presume you mean pop/rock/jazz rather than non-operatic classical music. If that's the case, then I'd say it doesn't. The majority of my collection is of classical music, with a large portion of that being dedciated to opera. However I also have a fairly large collection of pop and musical theatre, all of which are also important to me.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

I'll be the odd man out and chime in on why I do like opera over non-classical music. Before someone points it out, I am aware that many of these aspects can be found in other music. I'll give four main reasons (maybe I'll think of more).

1. Powerful, acoustic, vocals. The sound of true squillo when a singers voice soars (or even roars) over a full orchestra is magnificent even on recording. When I listen to some other music now, after being accustomed to opera, where the vocals are loud and it is obviously due to vocal amplification it just sounds wrong. Like a pin drop turned up to 120 decibels. Popular music has some talented singers, but they don't really have a Melchior (who does?).

2. More complex, less repetitive music. Many popular songs and music has a very repetitive and constant beat and is based on extremely repetitive and simple chord progressions. Although not universally true, opera generally will rely on simple repetitive music only when there is an intricate vocal line being sung over it (like in Norma) and otherwise has more flavourful music. Again, I realise this is a generalisation, but I can say nothing on why I like opera in general without making generalisations.

3. Orchestration. Oftentimes, other types of music involve a smaller "band" or a set of electronic noises. A full orchestra provides much more variety for the composer to play around with.

4. Lyrical, myth-like, and simple stories that are brought alive and given depth through music and singing. It would be accurate to describe a lot of musicals as plays where people sing. This is not the case in opera, where the music is integral to the story, often supplanting other traditional dramatic elements as the primary method of storytelling. An opera with a simple but touching story, properly acted and sung with lyricism and grace, is, in my opinion, one of the most moving art forms humanity has created. 


As a final, less logical, more romantic, and more, well operatic, viewpoint as to why I love opera I will say this. Opera's stories, opera's music, opera's acting, and opera in general, reflect reality back at us not as it is, but as how it should be sung; in this way operas create an artistic experience not through cynical realism, nonsensical abstraction, or political proselytising, but through lyricism, beauty, grace, myth, legend, and pure romanticism. Distinctly 18th and 19th century values and ideals, but sue me, I'll keep taking them over the art we often get today.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BachIsBest said:


> As a final, less logical, more romantic, and more, well operatic, viewpoint as to why I love opera I will say this. Opera's stories, opera's music, opera's acting, and opera in general, reflect reality back at us not as it is, but as how it should be sung; in this way operas create an artistic experience not through cynical realism, nonsensical abstraction, or political proselytising, but through lyricism, beauty, grace, myth, legend, and pure romanticism. Distinctly 18th and 19th century values and ideals, but *sue me, I'll keep taking them over the art we often get today.*


They're going to have to sue a lot of us.


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## Birmanbass (Jun 1, 2021)

Art Rock said:


> It does not for me either. If I had to give up either my opera CD's or my combined pop/rock CD's collection, opera would be toast.


Hah Victor would be saying "I dont believe it"..you are no longer fit to use my avatar. :lol:


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

I grew up with five siblings, so was exposed to many different types of music. My parents had a few classical records (78s) including a Swan Lake Suite on 2 12-inch disks, which I favored. They had a couple of Caruso records which I thought was a lot of screaming, so I didn't take to him at all.

I'm the only one in the family who likes so-called Classical Music by way of the piano (Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov), then symphonic LPs from the Columbia Record Club - Eugene Ormandy, George Szell, Leonard Bernstein, Fritz Reiner, et al. I loved that!

I came to opera through a recording of the Sleepwalking Scene from Verdi's *Macbeth* sung by one Maria Callas which revealed to me that there was much more to opera than I thought. I couldn't afford the EMI recordings, so I bought budget LPs. *Lucia di Lammermoor* with Roberta Peters and *Madama Butterfly* with Clara Petrella were my first.

Later, with my student loan, I got some of the complete operas with Callas - *Norma * was on Seraphim by then, and the Cetra *La Gioconda* was on the budget label Everest. *Rigoletto* was at full price, so was *Tosca*. I became a Callas fanatic.

In the early seventies I became a volunteer usher at the War Memorial Opera House, which presented the San Francisco Opera, the San Francisco Symphony, and the San Francisco Ballet in alternating seasons. Everybody who was anybody in opera appeared in San Francisco in those days, with some exceptions, but Callas had ceased singing regularly then, but I saw everything that appeared in this fabulous company. Opera became my favorite art form and all other music took a back seat, later all other singers became secondary to Callas and Corelli, though I'd never heard Corelli live and Callas only in 1974 at the final tour.

I like The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Johnny Mathis, The Platters, John Denver, which were part of the music in my life. Opera and Callas and Corelli are music for my soul.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I like what Bachisbest says a lot.
My sister was an opera singer and I worshipped her as a child. She left home for TCU and then opera school in Zurich when I was 8 and I never saw her till I was 15 ( where I saw her in 2 operas and she took me to Bayreuth), which cemented the idolizing of her. My mother encouraged me in all my interests ( I have 40 Youtube videos on various subjects including opera with over 80,000 views) and generously bought me any opera LPs I wanted. I was a mad opera queen as a teen. I put opera mostly aside when I was married (!!!!) and when I was in my 20's ( I was a disco queen) and even skipped seeing Sutherland in the late 70's as it cost too much ( !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). When I moved to Seattle I became a masseur and had a client who had 10000 mostly opera lps in his basement ( he owned THE classical record store here) and he mentored me in opera and made me many recordings. He was responsible for me becoming crazy for Sutherland, Callas, Norman, Flagstad, Ludwig. Later on I had another client who was head of the language dept. at the UW who took me to many operas here, taught me to love Wagner, and took me to Santa Fe where we saw some operas and I chauffeured him all over that beautiful state. I also had a client I saw twice who was one of the most famous opera critics in the world and we spent our entire sessions with me picking his brain!!! I have been uniquely lucky in my mentors!!!
I am passionate about music period, of which opera is a huge part. I am also crazy about R&B, disco, Jeff Buckley, Dimash, Yma Sumac, jazz, early Barbra ( my speech on her has over 7000 views). I am so lucky in my senior years to have a friend who rides with me at my courier job who listens to music with me and we are both very passionate listeners to all sorts of music including several opera selections every week and she goes crazy for them!!!!! It is soooo powerful when you can meet people you can share your love of opera with. As one last tidbit, when I was 14/15 I had an amateur dramatic coloratura soprano voice and could sing up to G6 and could sing ( approximations of ) the arias Callas and Sutherland sang. I wish I had taped this!!!! I deafened my sister at 15 riding over the alps singing Hojoto in a Beetle.
I must also very heavily credit an earlier internet opera group OperaL and this group for playing an ENORMOUS role in mentoring me in my fanatic love of opera. Bonetan's contests have taught me so much.
So that is my crazy, crazy story.


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## Music Snob (Nov 14, 2018)

BachIsBest said:


> I'll be the odd man out and chime in on why I do like opera over non-classical music. Before someone points it out, I am aware that many of these aspects can be found in other music. I'll give four main reasons (maybe I'll think of more).
> 
> 1. Powerful, acoustic, vocals. The sound of true squillo when a singers voice soars (or even roars) over a full orchestra is magnificent even on recording. When I listen to some other music now, after being accustomed to opera, where the vocals are loud and it is obviously due to vocal amplification it just sounds wrong. Like a pin drop turned up to 120 decibels. Popular music has some talented singers, but they don't really have a Melchior (who does?).
> 
> ...


I love this comment because you give scientific reasons. Let's not forget that music is science- numbers through time. The endless repetition and consistent tempos of popular music is just one example.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Well, seeing that opera and non-classical are so different, I don't feel a draw in either direction. I just happen to prefer opera to most any other music, but still listen to other music. More interesting to me is the draw to instrumental classical vs opera and someone ran a poll, *Orchestral Works vs. Opera*, that shows an 84% preference for instrumental.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SixFootScowl said:


> Well, seeing that opera and non-classical are so different, I don't feel a draw in either direction. I just happen to prefer opera to most any other music, but still listen to other music. More interesting to me is the draw to instrumental classical vs opera and someone ran a poll, *Orchestral Works vs. Opera*, that shows an 84% preference for instrumental.


The preference for instrumental music isn't surprising, since opera is a theatrical art form, not merely a musical one. But it's long been curious to me that nearly all popular music these days seems to be vocal. Every time I go shopping I'm forced to listen to people making vocal noises, most of them disagreeable. These noises carry dreary, repetitious, sometimes incomprehensible words, and are accompanied by monotonously repetitive banging which doesn't even sound like people playing real instruments. it's quite horrible, and it makes me want to get out of the store as quickly as possible.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> The preference for instrumental music isn't surprising, since opera is a theatrical art form, not merely a musical one. But it's long been curious to me that nearly all popular music these days seems to be vocal. Every time I go shopping I'm forced to listen to people making vocal noises, most of them disagreeable. These noises carry dreary, repetitious, sometimes incomprehensible words, and are accompanied by monotonously repetitive banging which doesn't even sound like people playing real instruments. it's quite horrible, and it makes me want to get out of the store as quickly as possible.


I'm not sure the popularity of vocal music is too surprising. Instrumental music is one of the most "pure" and abstract art forms; the meaning of the work must be carefully listened for and listening for it is a bit of an acquired skill. On the other hand, we are fine-tuned from every day life in picking up the meaning and emotional context of regular voices which makes vocal music more immediately accessible especially if the singing involved is more "tuneful talking" with emotion and emphasis placed similarly to regular speech, than a properly projected sound required to fill an opera house.

Regardless, my neighbor's kid had a pool party today that featured heavily on the "monotonously repetitive banging which doesn't even sound like people playing real instruments" aspect of modern popular music. Although I realise the following is a generalisation, I sometimes feel like all that is needed to make a modern gangster rap song is a 4/4 or 2/2 time signature, a loud, intentionally ugly bass sound on every strong beat, and some guy half-yelling or groaning the most vulgar lyrics imaginable over the bass (small bonus every time the lyrics rhyme a cuss word). Oy vey.

The worst part is, I'm in my early 20s so I can't even complain about the kids these days. You old guys have it easy!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BachIsBest said:


> I'm not sure the popularity of vocal music is too surprising. Instrumental music is one of the most "pure" and abstract art forms; the meaning of the work must be carefully listened for and listening for it is a bit of an acquired skill. On the other hand, we are fine-tuned from every day life in picking up the meaning and emotional context of regular voices which makes vocal music more immediately accessible especially if the singing involved is more "tuneful talking" with emotion and emphasis placed similarly to regular speech, than a properly projected sound required to fill an opera house.


You are, sadly, correct. Mankind has barely, and rarely, escaped his primitive roots.



> Regardless, my neighbor's kid had a pool party today that featured heavily on the "monotonously repetitive banging which doesn't even sound like people playing real instruments" aspect of modern popular music. Although I realise the following is a generalisation, I sometimes feel like all that is needed to make a modern gangster rap song is a 4/4 or 2/2 time signature, a loud, intentionally ugly bass sound on every strong beat, and some guy half-yelling or groaning the most vulgar lyrics imaginable over the bass (small bonus every time the lyrics rhyme a cuss word). Oy vey.
> 
> *The worst part is, I'm in my early 20s so I can't even complain about the kids these days. You old guys have it easy!*


Easy? We've had three generations of kids to have to complain about.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

BachIsBest said:


> I'm not sure the popularity of vocal music is too surprising. Instrumental music is one of the most "pure" and abstract art forms; the meaning of the work must be carefully listened for and listening for it is a bit of an acquired skill. On the other hand, we are fine-tuned from every day life in picking up the meaning and emotional context of regular voices which makes vocal music more immediately accessible especially if the singing involved is more "tuneful talking" with emotion and emphasis placed similarly to regular speech, than a properly projected sound required to fill an opera house.
> 
> Regardless, my neighbor's kid had a pool party today that featured heavily on the "monotonously repetitive banging which doesn't even sound like people playing real instruments" aspect of modern popular music. Although I realise the following is a generalisation, I sometimes feel like all that is needed to make a modern gangster rap song is a 4/4 or 2/2 time signature, a loud, intentionally ugly bass sound on every strong beat, and some guy half-yelling or groaning the most vulgar lyrics imaginable over the bass (small bonus every time the lyrics rhyme a cuss word). Oy vey.
> 
> The worst part is, I'm in my early 20s so I can't even complain about the kids these days. You old guys have it easy!


This forum is about opera, but before R & B was killed by rap, I found a lot of it from 70's and 80's very inventive and done with real musicians: e.g Earth Wind and Fire. It wasn't just mindless repetitiveness. The music today is driven by what computers see the masses as liking and purchasing rather than musicians being free to create. Not all pop music is junk, just most of today's music except for Dimash.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Found in my IN box today:


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