OPERA


LUV - I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know an awful lot about opera. This is because I went to - at the time - the 63rd worst school in the country and therefore didn’t get to properly study music. I worked on a market stall instead of at a theatre. My dad mainly listened to Roxy Music. I’m not nearly enough of a dick to actually know any opera singers.


However, I do suffer from a very mild fear of flying. I wriggle around and grip the armrests during takeoff and landing. On longer flights I can’t fall asleep because my mind is too busy calculating the precise amount of time it’d take for me to fall through the sky and crash into the ground if the floor of the plane suddenly gave out. I am, simply put, a nightmare to be around.


Or at least I was. In the last couple of years I’ve stopped being such a jangling mess of red-raw nerves on flights. This is partly because I’m now a VERY IMPORTANT JETSETTER and familiarity has eased me through the worst of it. But it’s also partly because of opera.


On one particular flight, while I was desperately trying to find something - anything -  to distract me from the knowledge that my life could end in a screaming fiery mess at a second’s notice, I inadvertently stumbled across the airline’s opera station on my headphones. I don’t know what the song was, but it was so relaxing and serene that it instantly calmed me down. I remembered to breathe again. I could luxuriate in the moment. I haven’t been quite as much of a sweaty bellend on flights since then, and I credit opera for that.


Now, admittedly I’ve tried listening to opera since then, and I can only get about two minutes into it without wanting to punch someone in the face. And I’d rather saw my own throat out than actually pay to watch an actual opera being performed. But let’s ignore that because it sort of weakens my argument. Deal? Deal.
- Stuart Heritage


HAT - I write this with the following provisos: a) I studied music b) some of my closest friends have opera singers for parents (lovely, talented parents who will hopefully continue to welcome me into their homes) c) I have worked in theatre d) I have worked in theatre on operas e) my mother dips into light opera now and again and has a fierce soprano.


Now that’s out of the way (and, in retrospect, makes me look like the most pretentious and privileged sunuffagun to ever walk the Earth), WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK.

As I age, I learn to appreciate things that wouldn’t have appealed to my juvenile palette. Stilton. Red wine. The comic stylings of Dave Allen. But I still don’t get opera. It’s a long, loud tedious mess and I want it to fuck off, please.

Most operas are like a Christmas Eastenders omnibus, but one where every scene is about four hours long, each character screams his or her lines, and Pat Butcher rocks up in pigtails and a bronze bra.

And what’s with the music? I mean, I like music that basically sounds like a giant robot taking a jackhammer to that big keyboard thing they played to the aliens in Close Encounters, but operatic scores follow no scale or time signature known to man. There’s no hook, no rhythm; they just meander along, parping trumpetly while people holding spears stand around, hooting.

The operaphiles among you (or “bastards”) will tell me that opera’s all about grandeur and drama and blah, but to you I say this: what’s grand about a red-faced fat man making my dinner travel through my digestive tract simply with the power of his vibrato? And why can’t you go to the opera in jeans? And also, fucking ALSO: Gio Compario from the Go Compare adverts.

Opera. HAT HAT HAT.
- Robyn Wilder