Getting into opera

Opera looks like a higher barrier than a symphony: three hours, sung in Italian or German, plots that are frequently absurd, and more expensive seats.

It is in fact the easiest way into classical music, because there are people, a story and a set, and your eyes have something to do the whole time. There are only two real obstacles — the length and the unfamiliarity — and both can be dealt with before you arrive.

Twenty minutes before curtain, do one thing

Read the plot.

This is not cheating; it is what opera audiences have done for three hundred years. Nineteenth-century audiences knew Violetta was going to die before they sat down. They bought the ticket to hear how she dies this time. Opera does not run on suspense. It runs on you knowing the ending and being hit by it anyway.

A synopsis takes five minutes. Know the principal characters and how they are related. You do not need the libretto.

What to do about the surtitles

Shanghai's theatres all run Chinese and English surtitles, usually at the side of the stage or above it.

On a first visit you will want to stare at them the whole evening. Resist that. An aria's text is often two or three sentences turned over and over for five minutes — and what is actually happening in those five minutes is in the sound, not in the words.

A workable rule: read the surtitles during recitative (the speech-like passages that move the plot) and watch the singers during arias (the melodic passages where the plot stops and someone feels something). Telling the two apart is easy, because the density of the music is completely different.

What to listen for

The sound itself. The central experience of opera is an unamplified human voice carrying across a hall of two thousand people. Recording destroys this entirely. First-time listeners are often startled by the sheer volume, and that surprise is the correct response.

Voice types. The tenor is usually the lover; the bass is the father, king or priest; the soprano is the heroine; the mezzo is often the rival or the mother. The convention is remarkably stable across Romantic opera, and recognising the voice tells you the character's position.

Ensembles. The one thing opera can do that nothing else can is have several people sing different thoughts simultaneously while the audience still follows each line. The act two finale of Le nozze di Figaro builds from a duet to a septet, and it is the summit of the craft. A spoken play cannot do this. Only music can.

What to see first

Good first operas: Carmen, La traviata, Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte, La bohème. High density of melody, clear plots, sensible length.

Leave for later: anything by Wagner (the shortest runs two and a half hours and has no arias in the conventional sense), Baroque opera seria (a great many da capo arias, which take adjusting to), and most twentieth-century opera.

Concert opera is a good compromise: no staging or blocking, orchestra on stage, singers standing and singing. You lose the theatre and the music gets clearer, and the tickets are usually a tier cheaper.

In Shanghai

The Shanghai Grand Theatre, the Shanghai Opera House and the Shanghai Grand Opera House, which opens in 2026, are the principal venues. The Shanghai Symphony and the Shanghai Opera House both programme concert opera and operatic gala evenings each season, which is a lower-cost way to test the water.

See the opera coming up →