Hearing the opera for the first time can be a jarring experience for many.
It's definitely an acquired taste, however, more and more people are beginning to appreciate it.
What is an opera? It's a musical theater or sung drama, with an orchestral accompaniment.
It is done in five acts usually preceded by an overture.
Just think of opera as a sort of musical Halloween, a carnival of emotions.
The common basis of all opera is the intense human emotion expressed in music, and the transformation of sound into spectacle.
Themes tend to cluster around courtship, seduction, betrayal, love and death, with a whole spectrum of obsessive pathology; jealousy, hatred, and insanity.
Opera has been described as the primal scream - of pain, ecstasy, triumph, love and despair.
The opera has a vocabulary all of its own.
Here are just a few to get you familiarized with its concepts.
Aria: vocal solo Bel canto: "beautiful singing'; classic Italian style of beautifully sustained vocal lines Bravura: characterized by great dash, skill and brilliance Castrato: male singer castrated before puberty; common in 16th century Italy Coloratura: specializing in elaborate vocal ornamentation Diva: Greek for 'goddess' Duet: composition for two voices Intermezzo: a short work, usually comic, performed between acts Legato: smooth connection of successive notes Leitmotif: a musical motive or theme used to signal a character, idea or event Libretto: the text or 'little book' of an opera Operetta: light opera Overture: orchestral piece played before the curtain rises, possibly incorporating musical material from the opera Prelude: introductory orchestral piece, similar to an overture, leading directly into the opera Prima Donna: 'first lady' or leading female voice; typically synonymous with imperious, demanding, impossible, capricious, willful Recitative: recitation, or spoken dialogue Tremolo: 'trembling' or excessive vibrato, sometimes called a 'wobble' Verismo: Italian for realism, a style of opera derived from naturalism, with contemporary, everyday settings and character Vibrato: a vibration or fluctuation of pitch or volume