I found this list of categories on a friend’s Facebook page and feel moved to add my own contribution. I suspect I will have to duck as people read it. It runs as follows:
Opera I hate: Arabella
Opera I think is overrated: Cosi fan Tutte, followed by Parsifal. Actually I feel this way about much of bel canto – lovely sound, but I can’t take all the women going mad when they get into a tight spot.
Opera I think is underrated: Mazeppa
Opera I Love: Either of Berg’s
Opera I Cherish: I don’t really distinguish between loving and cherishing
Guilty Pleasure: Andrea Chénier
Opera I want to see revived: Von Heute auf Morgen, if only to find out what a one-act comic opera by serial-period Schoenberg could possibly be like.
Opera that I first performed in: None, though I’ve done a lot of opera choruses in concert
Opera that I first saw: Tosca
Opera I saw most recently: Le vin herbé (Frank Martin)
Greatest Opening: Otello, followed by Die Walküre. Can’t beat a good storm to get you going.
Greatest Ending: Other than the obvious Götterdämmerung, it would be the Dutchman or Traviata, with an honourable mention to Andrea Chénier again.
Worst middle of an otherwise Great Opera: Siegfried. I mean, what else could it possibly be?
Greatest Opera of all time: Boris Godunov
What a pity about ARABELLA. My ‘guilty pleasure ‘ is that I prefer it to DER ROSENKAVALIER.
My reasons for disliking it are related to those for disliking Cosi (consider the plots). But we all have to have a blind spot somewhere.