Written by Duncan Day-Myron

For the uninitiated, opera can be a little intimidating to say the least. Probably the biggest hurdle for most is that it is almost never in English. Operas tell stories, and without understanding stories it can be easy to feel lost. But the effort can open a door to a whole new world of music and performance outside of what you may be used to. Just follow a few simple rules, and you’ll be well on your way.
First, stay the hell away from Il Divo, Josh Groban, and all of that. It’s just the wrong first step. They have fine voices, whatever. It’s too polished and overproduced. It isn’t real enough. Think about it, if someone knew opera but wanted to get into rock and roll, would you expect them to start with Britney Spears’ cover of (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction? God, I hope not. So try to find some full performances. Also, pick and choose individual pieces of larger operas, and you should accept early on that the point isn’t to learn how to make a sweet opera mix CD.
When you’re looking for something to listen to, don’t dive in head first blindfolded; find something you might be familiar with. Not necessarily familiar with the music, but the story. There are operas based on Shakespeare, and that’s where I started, but there’s lots out there either based on popular stories, or which have been adapted into other forms that are more popular. A short list of suggestions follows the article. If you know the general idea of where the story begins and ends, you will have a general idea of what is going on as you listen to it.
If you can’t find any with a story familiar to you, just look it up and read along. There’s no shame in hitting up Wikipedia to find out some information about a piece either before, during or after you listen to it. Not understanding the lyrics, but hearing the context of a song, can totally change your reaction of it. Sometimes it makes it more awesome. You might be listening to a piece of music and not even realize it’s about someone being brutally murdered.
And if you find something you like, keep going with it. Find different performances and different performers. You might be surprised how much can change. So much of a performance lies in the hands of the performers rather than the writers.
Opera really needs to be approached in a different way than popular music. If you just sit down and throw on some Bizet, there’s a pretty good chance you won’t sit through the whole thing. But if you do the legwork and get some stuff you can follow along with, at least somewhat, it will be a totally different experience. And, simply put, the people who sing opera, especially those who perform it live, are the finest singers on the planet. Bar none. Mariah Carey is a piece of shit compared to these people. Opera requires skill and control of the voice like nothing else. As you listen to more, and hear different performances of the same productions, you’ll start to discover what kind of performances appeal to you.

Berlioz, Béatrice et Bénédict (loosely based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing)
Humperdinck, Hänsel und Gretel
Rimsky-Korsakov, Mozart and Salieri (same source material as the film Amadeus)
Prokofiev, War & Peace
Mozart, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni
Puccini, Madama Butterfly (adapted many times for screen; basis for Weezer’s album Pinkerton and the Broadway musical Miss Saigon; the most performed opera in North America), La Boheme, (basis for the Broadway musical and film Rent)
Strauss, Salome (based on the play by Oscar Wilde)
Verdi, Aida, Macbeth, Othello
Tchaikovsky, Eugene Onegin (based on the novel by Pushkin)