The best way to get your first opera exposure, though, might be to catch the Met’s Summer HD festival. For the past two years, they’ve broadcast the HD recordings of a different opera every night of a week in late August on the side of the Met in Lincoln Center Plaza, for free. It’s a great way to try out a bunch of different operas—there’s no investment other than arriving an hour or so before the show starts, you get to hang out outside on a nice summer night, and if you really don’t like it you can just leave without worrying that you’re wasting money. Also, my girlfriend actually prefers the HD recordings to going to see live shows, because you can see the singers much better than from the seats we can afford.

Finally, I’d be amiss in not recommending another fine opera parody: Peter Schickele’s The Abduction of Figaro (available on DVD). It spoofs all sorts of operas and opera conventions (with characters such as Donald Giovanni—”they call him Don for short”) but was funny even when we were kids who knew next-to-nothing about opera.

The utterly fabulous ‘An Incomplete Education’ by Judy Jones and William Wilson suggests that for one’s first opera one shouldn’t choose Wagner (“later you may wish to spend several hours in a darkened auditorium musing over the erotic implications of death”), but rather something by Mozart or Verdi (Puccini’s alright, they admit, but even a novice will appreciate real quality) for a first outing.

The opera version of ‘The Makropolous Case’ is by Janacek, isn’t it? I’m not sure it’s often performed since it’s in Czech, not your standard operatic language, though Janacek’s operas are becoming more popular (I also know of ‘Jenufa’ and ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’ but have never listened to any of them). Does Elena Makropolous appear in the novel? or is there a character who has her sort of history?

A good send up of opera and its cliches can be found in Terry Pratchett’s ‘Maskerade’ (incidentally also the title of an opera by Khachaturian…), and Agatha Christie uses a production of ‘Tosca’ to have a character commit murder in one of her short stories. Edmund Crispin similarly uses a production of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg in his ‘Swan Song’ for a background to murder, but the opera isn’t really an important part of the plot – the singers are.

It might be. You could try listening to a few of the arias first, maybe. Gorgeous story! Wagner in general is pretty long and heavy.

My parents don’t weep, and they go to operas all the time. I think dramatic weeping would enhance the experience, though. Either that or a gorgeous dress like Cher’s in Moonstruck.

I don’t think you are an idiot! I assumed that’s what had happened.

Is it too long, though, for a first-timer? Has this advice been correct and I had better wait on Tristan and Isolde until I am a more advance opera-seer?

Helpful! The Magic Flute was good when I was a kid, and I am quite keen to see it again, to see how closely it aligns with my memory. And Madame Butterfly sounds good.

Solid advice. I will bear it in mind and not start with Wagner. I have actually seen Mozart before — I saw The Magic Flute when I was a little girl. I don’t remember it awfully well now, though.