h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A subject about which I know next to nothing.

I know very little about Classical music, either. However, I do attempt occasional forays into it. When some people try this, they seek out well-known favourites with a nice tune that they can hum. Out of sheer perversity I grow the other way - jangly, discordant stuff that you'd be mad to hum.

So...what might be my operatic way in? Apart from Nixon?

Supplementary question: If people like the Vesta la Giubbi stuff - how do they tend to get on with your Adamses and Glasses?

" If people like the Vesta la Giubbi stuff - how do they tend to get on with your Adamses and Glasses?" [Edward the Bonobo]

I'm not sure I can answer that, as I find the Italian warhorse operas of the 19th century horrendously syrupy [tenors who scoop up to notes, and going full-speed ahead in overemotional angst].

Fortunately, I enjoy the French and German operas from the same period, and I'm a huge fan of Gilbert and Sullivan at its best. Mozart excelled in both Italian and German operas, and he was wonderfully playful at times, rather than bombastic from start to finish. Rossini made his mark in Italian opera, but toward the end of his operatic career [when he was an *old* man of 35 or so], he moved to Paris and wrote for the French. I love his "Guillaume Tell." Ironically, my "highlights" CD of that work leaves out the well-known overture .

The Twentieth Century had some delightful operatic highlights, starting with Lehar's "The Merry Widow" and continuing through Joplin's "Tremeonisha" to Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" and Bernstein's "Candide."

But after "Candide," I have less familiarity with the genre. Benjamin Britten wrote "Paul Bunyan" and "Billy Budd," both said to be very fine works. Webern wrote an opera about a long Christmas dinner, but I haven't sampled that yet. GianCarlo Menotti wrote "Amahl and the Night Visitors" and "The Consul." Both of them seem to have legs, at least during the Christmas season. A composer whose name I can't remember wrote the well-regarded "Susanna" and "Of Mice and Men."

Philip Glass is probably the best-known opera composer since about 1970. I think the weirdest ever title of an opera is "Einstein on the Beach." "Akhmenaten" seems kind of odd for the subject of an opera, but what do I know?