THEY JUST WANTED IT TO STOP

Police in Amsterdam mistakenly kicked in the door of a local opera singer after residents called in reports of a man screaming.

(Thanks to Ralph K., Jon Harris, and Jeff Meyerson)

In extremely vaguely related news, the tutu situation is perilous*.

(Thanks to Monique C.)

*The Perilous Tutus WBAGNFARB

Comments

[wanderer2575]

"Opera: A performance involving singers with orchestra (complete with unrealistic scenery and silly costumes), which tells a story so complex that nobody in the audience understands what is going on, although all speak about it as if they did. Consists mainly of fat people bellowing in a foreign language."

(David W. Barber, A Musician's Dictionary)

[JG]

'Mistakenly'?

[wanderer2575]

Bugs Bunny knew how to deal with opera singers.

[Clankie]

Police action was appropriate: someone might have been skinning rabbits.

[Le Petomane]

A very wise man once said: I would rather undergo a vasectomy via weedwhacker than attend an opera."
-----Dave Barry

[Meanie the Blue]

As a crass and crude admirer of arts achievements by others, possessed of a singing voice that would dessicate cows and prompt them to launch round after round of tomatoes in my direction, I view opera singing as the pendulum that has swung to the extreme opposite end. I can bear the melodramatic and contrived storylines, the dramatics being rendered entirely in song, and even the high-brow pretense of it all.

Just, please, don't make me sit through those vocal sounds. Yes, the singers are highly trained professionals who have honed their vocal skills to an extraordinary degree and practiced and sacrificed for their art for countless hours, but my ears are just unable to appreciate what emerges.

Wanderer, your evocation of Bugs Bunny says that all perfectly. That cartoon, and others like it (What's Opera, Doc?, anyone?), was a work of true genius.

[ligirl]

*snorks* @ all (especially wanderers bugs bunny!) -
but i must admit (as a *young* lady-with-Many-songs-in-my-head . . .)
i'm kind of a sucker for 'O Mio Babbino Caro'

oh, and
La Vie Boheme !

[FredKey]

Oh that this tutu sullied flesh would melt.

[Le Petomane]

Here is another expert opinion on opera. I believe we have attained a caucus agreed upon by a majority.

I have attended operas, whenever I could not help it, for fourteen years now; I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening to an unfamiliar opera. I am enchanted with the airs of "Travatore" and other old operas which the hand-organ and music-box have made entirely familiar to my ear. I am carried away with delightful enthusiasm when they are sung at the opera. But, oh, how far between they are! And what long, arid, heartbreaking and headaching "between-times" of that sort of intense but incoherent noise which always so reminds me of the time the orphan asylum burned down.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

[ken]

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds." Attributed to Mark Twain.

[Not My Usual Alias]

No one has linked to His Daveness' experience on stage in an opera? He was a corpse and watched tv during the performance, but it was still ART