It ain't Over Till the Liposuctioned Lady Sings

Rum old thing, opera. If you want to tell a story what does the music add and where does opera become operetta or slide into musical? Most of us ignorami would recognise perhaps a dozen pieces of music from operas and probably mostly the same ones. I have a sneaky suspicion that this is because they are the great ones, the uplifting and moving ones that set moods and attitudes. That is what the music in an opera can do: allow emotive summaries, herald mood changes or enhance and direct feeling. It also prepares us for the surreal and absolves the librettist of some of the pedantic baggage of realism.