Turandot staged at Seattle Opera, 2012
I often harp on the irrelevance of genre distinctions, but even I have to admit that some musical tastes are incongruous; for example, opera and heavy metal. ‘Bel canto,’ after all, is simply the Italian for ‘pretty song,’ and let’s face it, metal includes a lot of ugly, ugly music. Opera is classical, classy, appealing. Heavy metal is brutal, thuggish and off-putting.
And yet… and yet…