The Critic Magazine

Robert Thicknesse on Opera

VIDENCE THAT THE YOUNG have not (contrary to reports) lost the ability to delight came when a survey of millennials, asked for a word to describe those who like opera, instead of the expected “moribund”, “tragic”, “solitary”, “insanitary”, etc, plumped for the rather diverting “evil”. Though when you ponder it, how could they think otherwise? The only place they might ever have encountered such mythic creatures will be in movies (watched on a phone on a bus), where a liking for opera is an invariable signifier

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