Opera has given us some undeniably lovely pieces of music. But - and this is purely my own personal take, not being nearly cultured or educated enough in the ways of opera to have an informed opinion - for me they work better as pieces, in isolation. Especially when the words are in a language I don’t speak, thereby becoming music themselves.

However, while I could no more sit through a whole opera than I could swallow my own hands, without the opera as a whole I doubt the pieces would have ever come to be. Perhaps you should look on operas like that: as dense, impenetrable jungles, from whose fertile ground treasures occasionally sprout.

But mostly they’re just noise and rain and things killing each other.