A Night at the Opera

I love listening to opera, but I’ve never actually been to one I liked.
I remember going to see Boris Godunov back in the 70s with my uncle, and he fell asleep (snoring loudly) before the first intermission. This happened immediately after he complained (loudly and in detail) about the singing. People all around us were trying to shush him up. Gosh I miss him.
Anyway, last year John and I went to Wozzeck, another lugubrious opera that I napped through myself, and our most recent foray involved Elektra, which if you remember your mythology was unrelenting gloom and doom…oh, and endlessly atonal in this case too. At one point I looked at John and it was all we could do not to burst out laughing.
Am I a Philistine? I really think I must be. I know I had way more fun watching Celine Dion singing with holographic Elvis on American Idol, and that darling Apolo Anton Ohno—a skater and ballroom dancer? Yes, just bring him on.
I put my need for melody and happy endings down to reading every depressing novel written before 1975. It probably scarred me for life and I'll never recover.