Aaaahhhhhhhh !! Where to begin!! Opera hasn't any good songs !!! (splutter, splutterrrrr) A bastard form of entertainment !*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Combining drama with song doesn't make it a bastard. A cross breed, possibly - but mongrels are usually stronger and more robust than the pure bred. The best of opera combines the strengths of both media of entertainment - the worst of opera tends not to survive, naturally enough.
As for good songs, well!
Carmen is packed with them - at least five first class songs in there;
Don Giovanni has at least two;
Marriage of Figaro - Cherabino's aria is superlatively excellent, has always been on my list for the desert island - and there are a couple of other good ones in there.
Aida - - I won't go on - most (not all!) of the repertoire has at least one good song in it.
But, really, the existence of good songs in opera avoids the point - they tend to support each other and build up a background feeling of whatever emotion the composer is trying to evoke, where even the lesser songs have a contextural integrity that help to carry you along in your suspended disbelief - which is the essence of all theatre, of course.
the ballet (well…. dance as high art rather than entertainment is always going to find only a limited audience); One of the problems that beset both opera and ballet is the belief that it is "high art." It is entertainment. It was so written and performed, and it is so received in civilized countries like Italy, where opera, particularly, is not the exclusive property of the intelligentsia
(I hope Emanuela will correct me if I've got this wrong!)[end rant]
And the proposed trip is one of the few that actually would tempt me to come back down to The Smoke again (although when I lived there, we talked of going up to the Smoke from Hounslow, for goodness sake! But it was Middlesex in those days.) Even at the expense of shocking Jo with the knowledge that I have a beard on my chin as well as high heels on my feet!
