Pondering The Allure Of Opera

A gala at the Metropolitan Opera has Alex Ross thinking about the attraction of opera. “For a long while, during the macho decades of rock and rap, it seemed as though vocal floridity had been drummed out of pop music. But it turns out that there is an abiding hunger in the heartland for high notes, melisma, fioritura, and the rest. So why don’t more people warm to the grand original? One problem is that there is no way of capturing opera’s elemental thrill on television, or even on a recording.”