When I told an architect friend that I was writting a brief book on opera, he asked if it would tell him 'what

he was
missing'. The feeling that he was missing something was a step in the exactly right direction, but the fact that he
had lived in England for 45 years without setting his foot in the theatre for an opera performance was reflection
on the small part that opera plays in the lives of the majority of so intelligent people in Britain. The basic appeal of
opera is to the heart, if not the head, and the British find the outpouring of emotion and passionate melody feel a
little embarrassing. Unlike for the Italians, the Germans and the French, the British have no native operatic
tradition of long standing, and so this opera has remained a largely suspect foreign import, which indulged in by
the rich, condemned by intellectuals on the old premise that ' anything too silly to be said, could be sung'. Opera
is not really something like that at all. The half of its origins may be aristocratic, but the other half are firmly
rooted in the songs, stories and dances of such popular entertainment through the centuries