How to get hooked on opera

Need to know

People often feel intimidated by opera, assuming it to be either socially exclusive, pretentious or intellectually complicated. But at the simplest level, operas are just great stories set to music.

There was no opera on my radar when I was growing up, but I did enjoy being taken to see Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. As I would later discover, these entertaining works not only made fun of the social mores of Victorian England but parodied the operatic music that was so popular among people of all backgrounds at that time. I also liked performing in school musicals, such as The King and I and My Fair Lady, and watching shows like West Side Story. I was starting to think about what music adds to a work of theatre in terms of atmosphere and characterisation.

I eventually heard my first opera – Puccini’s Tosca – on a school trip as a teenager. I was already keen on drama and this seemed like drama on steroids. Although I didn’t understand everything, I could tell it was an exciting story, with passionate music sung by people whose lives seemed to depend on it. The following year we were taken to see Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and that was enjoyable in a different way – funny and entertaining. Just like Gilbert and Sullivan, comic opera was a type of musical theatre that had its conventions, and the similarities started to make sense.

From then on, I was hooked, and I set about listening to opera recordings, following the music with a score, and reading about the lives of composers. Some of this was fairly time-consuming – operas are, after all, long-form artistic works and you can’t listen on fast-forward – but it was time well spent, opening up a vast array of stimulating and enjoyable works.

Opera required a bit more effort to get to grips with than a musical, but its additional layers of musical complexity and sophistication were, for me at least, ultimately more rewarding. Operas deal with all of life’s big issues, from unrequited love to the death of a loved one. They address social issues too: political rivalries, malign power, toxic male violence. Listening to opera can be highly cathartic, a way of making sense of your own emotions and the world’s problems.

Operas vary greatly in length and musical style, and deal with a huge range of different subjects. So here are some tips on how to work out what sort of opera might be for you, where to find it, and how to get the most out of it. But first it can be useful to understand where the art form came from and how operas function in the most general terms.

What is an opera?

Opera was invented in Italy around the year 1600 as a new way of telling stories through music, drama, dance and staging. Initially, it was a form of courtly entertainment – dukes and princes putting on lavish performances to outdo their rivals. But by the mid-17th century, entrepreneurs had begun to realise that opera was something that could engage a much larger public. A commercial art form was born.

Opera spread rapidly. It continued to flourish in Italy but strong traditions of opera-writing soon developed in France and Germany. Over the centuries, opera took off all over the Western world. Some composers – Verdi, Wagner, Puccini – made opera their specialism. Others, such as Mozart, wrote operas alongside orchestral, instrumental and choral music.

Creating an opera is a collaborative effort. A small number of composers have written their own texts, but in the majority of cases a composer will work with one or more librettists, ‘libretto’ (‘little book’ in Italian) being the term used for an operatic text.

Some operas are for a small group of singers – and Francis Poulenc’s La voix humaine (about one side of a telephone conversation) calls for just one. But, usually, an opera will have a sizeable cast of leading roles (principals), plus a chorus that comments on events. Operas usually require an orchestra and a conductor, though scaled-down arrangements may use piano alone.

An opera director comes up with the ‘vision’ for a production, potentially reinterpreting the opera quite freely. (Operas are now regularly updated.) The director works in conjunction with set and costume designers to realise the production’s ‘look’. Operas often call for dancers, choreographers and actors. A vast army of people work behind the scenes: not only backstage and technical crew, but wig and costume makers, and staff who run the box office, market the opera, and run educational events. With so many people to pay, opera tends to be a very expensive business.

What sort of stories do operas tell?

Operas may be tragic or comic, serious or light-hearted, and they cover the full range of human predicaments. Although some plots are invented from scratch, a librettist usually adapts a pre-existing literary source. The earliest operas were drawn from Greek mythology or classical history, and the same legends were set countless times.

By the 19th century, composers were setting a much wider range of dramatic subjects to music. Shakespeare’s plays have proved extremely popular, but many more recent dramatists and novelists have also had their works adapted as operas. Words take far longer to sing than to say, so a librettist must condense down a pre-existing text, converting it into singable verse.

Sometimes operas are performed in their original language; sometimes they are translated into English. Many opera companies nowadays use ‘surtitles’, where a translation is projected above the stage so the audience can follow along without difficulties.

Opera’s oddities

Some aspects of opera can seem strange at first. Watching opera without understanding its conventions would be like watching a sports match without knowing the rules of play, but as soon as you understand the conventions, everything makes sense.

One of the things people tend to find oddest about opera is that characters communicate in song. Sometimes a composer will use ‘diegetic’ music, which the characters on stage hear as music. An example of this is in Verdi’s La traviata where the hero, Alfredo, entertains the crowds with a drinking song and the heroine Violetta joins in:

Otherwise, you can assume that the characters on stage hear the music ‘non-diegetically’: as speech or even as thoughts in a character’s head. Here is another tenor aria, from Donizetti’s comic opera L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love). This is not a ‘performance’ to an audience like the example above but merely a character ruminating over his inner feelings:

The way opera singers sing may also seem unusual at first. They are highly trained to perform challenging music that typically goes on for several hours. Their voices tend to be loud and resonant because they typically sing unamplified and they have to make themselves heard in vast theatres, over a large orchestra. Different genres of opera call for different types of voice – heavier for a composer such as Wagner, lighter for a composer like Mozart.

What to do

How to access opera

Today there are numerous resources available to anyone who wants to get to know opera. Operas can be accessed in four ways: recordings, videos (many available online), broadcastings, or live in the theatre. Opera recordings come in two forms: complete recordings and highlights. Try to get hold of a recording that comes with a dual-language libretto, so you can read a translation as you listen.

Individual singers also often release arias (songs) from different operas. These can be a good way of sampling which composers and works are to your taste. You’ll probably be surprised at how much of the music you already recognise from films, cartoons and advertising. The tone of singers’ voices varies immensely, so it’s worth using YouTube to identify singers you particularly enjoy listening to.

It’s also possible to catch opera performances on radio or television, though less often than in the past. Check out stations like BBC Radio 3 (available online outside the UK) or your regional public-broadcasting station. A relatively recent innovation is the screening of operas in cinemas. This brings world-class opera from theatres like the Royal Opera House in London or the Metropolitan Opera (‘the Met’) in New York nearer to home, complete with close-ups you wouldn’t get from seats in the gallery.

But the best way to truly appreciate opera is in the theatre. Nothing compares with walking into an auditorium, hearing the orchestra tuning up and anticipating the rise of the curtain as the lights go down. So check out where your nearest opera company performs and see what they have to offer. Some companies have a fixed base in a major city; others tour.

Find the opera for you

Some people are omnivorous opera fans. Others have a preference for a particular type. It may be that you find certain types of opera unappealing, but that’s not to say that you couldn’t enjoy others. So a first step to becoming an opera enthusiast is to find your operatic ‘niche’.

Operas are incredibly varied. Some people love the passionate, romantic operas of a composer like Puccini or are ardent fans of Wagner (epic works based on Nordic mythology, with sumptuous orchestration). Others find this sort of repertoire over-the-top and prefer the refined elegance of Mozart, or harmonically adventurous modern opera. If you find the idea of operatic tragedies where at least one character dies off-putting, comic opera may be the thing for you.

Think about the subject matter that appeals to you too. Perhaps you want to immerse yourself in the escapism of classical legend? If so, you could start with Offenbach’s light opera Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) or Purcell’s short opera Dido and Aeneas. Or maybe you like your opera realistic, with characters who behave like we do today, in which case Puccini’s La bohème is a great starting point. Though there are operas whose storylines seem remote from our times, there are plenty whose themes are timeless. These operas work just as well when updated to our own time, as this example from Bizet’s Carmen shows:

Navigating opera’s building blocks

Different countries have developed different operatic traditions and conventions. Operas are extraordinarily diverse in style, which makes it difficult to generalise about how they function. Nevertheless, there are some basic building blocks that are common to many operas.

An opera is often prefaced by an overture, which is a section of orchestral music heard before the curtain rises. It may use themes that appear later in the opera, capture something of the opera’s general mood, or be a completely unrelated orchestral piece. Some overtures have enjoyed a life of their own as concert works. Rossini’s are full of sparkling, toe-tapping tunes, such as the overture from La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) – you should be able to hear the music moving through a number of distinct sections:

Some operas work rather like musicals, interspersing musical numbers with spoken dialogue. Mozart’s The Magic Flute is a good example, as is Bizet’s Carmen, at least in its original, most frequently performed version. But most operas have continuous music from beginning to end. Often, there will be clear song-like sections known as arias, and between the arias is something called recitative, a sort of cross between singing and speaking.

Arias and recitative have different dramatic functions. An aria allows a character to reflect on their situation. Duets, trios, quartets and choruses act similarly, but allow characters to have conversations. Recitative is more ‘active’: because it is like speech, a lot of information can be conveyed and the action can be moved along swiftly.

Later composers tended to blur the boundaries between arias and recitative. The German composer Richard Wagner reformed opera in the mid-19th century, creating works where the music flowed continuously without clear breaks, and others began to follow his lead. We call this type of opera through-composed.

Different types of arias were preferred in different historical periods. In the Baroque era, composers like Handel wrote three-part (or ‘da capo’) arias that can be represented in the form ABA. Once the singers have finished sections A and B (often in contrasting moods), they go back and repeat section A, adding embellishment to create extra interest.

Dramatically, this was a rather limiting form: the character returns to the first dramatic idea and the action gets ‘stuck’. Later composers wrote two-part arias, which were better for portraying a shift in a character’s mood. These sometimes formed the basis for an extended section of a scene. Try listening to an aria and working out where the music moves into a new section – does it correspond with a new idea in the text?

By the turn of the 20th century, arias had become much freer, as composers prioritised making the music serve the needs of the drama. In this example from Puccini’s La bohème, the music flows flexibly, following the character’s thoughts. The heroine Mimì is dying, and her music is slow, hesitant, fragile – then rising and swelling in intensity as she tells her lover Rodolfo, from whom she has been separated, how much she loves him:

There are also ensembles of many types in opera and often characters sing together and express opposing viewpoints simultaneously. Here is a clever example from Puccini’s Tosca, where the malevolent chief of police Scarpia sings of wanting to seduce the heroine. Can you label which portions of music are non-diegetic and which diegetic?

At the beginning of the extract, Scarpia gives instructions to an accomplice and voices his thoughts to himself. In operatic terms, this is speech. In the background, we hear the strains of an organ and a choir singing in a church service (music audible to everyone on stage). Eventually, the two merge, as Puccini brings together the diegetic and the non-diegetic, the sacred and the profane, to great effect.

Understanding voices

Over the centuries, certain voice types came to be associated with particular types of operatic role. Young lovers are usually sung by high voices – a soprano as heroine and a tenor as hero. Many operas feature father figures or love rivals who typically prevent the lovers from being together; these are commonly sung by baritones, with deeper voices. Mezzo-sopranos, whose range is somewhat lower than the soprano, usually play down-to-earth female characters. Altos and basses are often elderly or supernatural characters.

There is one other voice type to be aware of. In early opera, such as those written in the 18th century by Handel, an artificial voice type was used: the castrato, created by castrating a boy in childhood to preserve his prepubertal voice into adulthood. Now that castrati no longer exist, their roles are played either by countertenors (men singing falsetto) or by women dressed as men. Here, for example, the mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly sings Julius Caesar:

There are also lots of ‘trouser roles’ in opera, written for a woman impersonating a male role – often, a young boy, such as the role of Cherubino in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. This might seem a bit strange at first but it is just another of opera’s quirks.

Preparing to see a live opera

It’s possible to go and see an opera without any advance preparation, as audiences would have done when operas were first performed. We don’t usually read ‘spoilers’ before watching a film, so there’s a case for just watching an opera unfold in front of you. This can work particularly well with the visceral Italian verismo (realist) operas of the late 19th century, such as Cavalleria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry) by Mascagni or Pagliacci (Clowns) by Leoncavallo, which are reasonably short and have straightforward, accessible plots about love triangles and revenge. The characters in these operas tend to wear their heart on their sleeve, as in this example from Pagliacci:

On the other hand, some opera plots can be complicated, with large casts of characters. In these cases, it is definitely worth reading the plot in advance to work out who is related to whom, and what the back story is that means a particular character has a grudge against another. Wikipedia is a useful resource for plot summaries, and you will find one in the programme available to buy at the theatre.

Like plays, operas are typically organised into acts – up to as many as four or five – though some short operas are in just one. Acts may, in turn, be divided into scenes. These structural breaks allow the composer and librettist to leap forward in the action, whether by hours or years. You will want to go to a performance knowing in advance how many acts it has and how many intervals there are going to be: don’t make the mistake I did at my first opera of thinking the second interval was the end!

With opera, you are not going simply for the storyline, and knowing the ending won’t detract from your enjoyment of the performance. You might even want to listen in advance of going to see an opera, so that some of the music is familiar. People often go to the same opera many times to see different productions and listen to different casts.

Some people worry about whether everything will seem ‘grand’ when they go to the theatre to see an opera. Here it is impossible to generalise, since it depends where you are. Some major cities have what can properly be called ‘opera houses’ – the Met in New York, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Royal Opera House in London, Paris Opéra, and so on. These are large, historic and often lavish theatres predominantly devoted to the performance of opera, and sometimes people like to dress up to for a special occasion. Likewise, there are opera festivals, such as the Glyndebourne Opera Festival in the UK, that have historically been black-tie events, though following a set dress code is rarely compulsory nowadays.

This model of opera-going is, however, comparatively rare. More typically, operas are performed in regular theatres that also stage plays, musicals and comedies. In this context, people tend to be far more casually dressed. Many opera companies, even at grander venues, are extremely keen nowadays to encourage audience members to attend dressed however they feel most comfortable.

You might even have an opportunity to watch an opera being performed in a more informal venue that isn’t a conventional theatre. There have recently been operas performed in pubs, and ‘flashmob’ performances in railway stations and shopping malls. As part of their outreach programmes, opera companies are increasingly taking opera to new and unexpected places – going out to find new audiences in the hope that these audiences will ultimately pay them a return visit.

Listening to an opera in the company of hundreds or thousands of other people, as the singers bear their souls, is a truly magical experience. Ultimately going to the opera isn’t about the other people in the audience or what they are wearing – it’s about what’s going on, on stage.

Links & books

The YouTube channels of The Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne, The Metropolitan Opera and Welsh National Opera offer fans a vast range of resources, from rehearsal clips to masterclasses.

Focusing on works in the Met’s repertoire, each episode of the Aria Code podcast analyses an individual aria.

For complete opera broadcasts, BBC Radio 3’s Opera on 3 webpage is your go-to place.

The book A History of Opera (2012) by Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker is a detailed but accessible history of the art form.

The book A Mad Love: An Introduction to Opera (2018) by the critic Vivien Schweitzer contains concise plot summaries and handy explanations of how the music itself works.

The book The Gilded Stage (2010) by Daniel Snowman takes a global look at the social history of opera, from its birth to the 20th century.