I was just over at Bitch, PhD (which I will also add to the blogroll if I can ever figure out what's going on with it), and she posted about how her son PK (Psuedonymous Kid) made her stop and listen to La Boheme because it was beautiful.
I've never given opera a fair chance - I think the music is often incredibly beautiful, but the voices are not always appealing to me. However, I know a few opera singers through my church gig, and in person they all have tremendous voices.
When I first started singing with the choir, we had a tenor section leader who was literally and metaphorically larger than life - a mythological character writ human. Matthew was about 6'6" tall, and looked like he could have been Thor, or a Hell's Angel - long blonde hair, dressed in black leather, with piercings and tattoos. He had 4 older sisters and 4 younger sisters, and he was born on February 29th. And his voice was extraordinary...probably not the perfection that a lot of opera fans seem to go for, but rough from cigarette smoking, touched by some heavy drinking and hard living, and imbued with a tremendous sense of humor. Despite the Hell's Angels appearance, he was a working opera singer, and he's traveled around the world a couple of times, often playing Pinkerton in M. Butterfly.
He was married to a lovely and gracious soprano. (I don't think they are married anymore because Matthew, like many dynamic and interesting men, had trouble keeping his penis between him and his wife - he couldn't stop himself from sharing it with another woman. I love Matthew, but like all the rest of us humans, he's far from perfect.)
Anyway, one year for our pops concert, Matthew and his gorgeous wife sang the Clock duet from Die Fledermaus. Monkey was sitting in the front row, and as soon as the first note came out of Matthew's mouth, Monkey's hands clamped over her ears. She has never recovered from her first experience with opera, which she declared to be "too loud".
Oh well, maybe someday.
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