“Coraline” is great as a book, a movie, and a comic book. Why not an opera?

In terms of story, the opera version at Folkoperan was true to the original. The scene decorations and costumes all had the right kind of eerie mood, and the buttons-for-eyes looked truly creepy.

The problem was the singing.

This performance left me more convinced than ever that I just do not get opera. I would have liked the show so much more if they had just stopped singing and talked like normal people.

Opera singing is simply weird, and this opera was weirder than many, I think. The music was not just atonal but also a-structural. I couldn’t discern any melody or musical theme at all in what the orchestra played and the singers sang. The orchestral music felt like a vague soundscape more than anything. And the singing literally seemed like something that a kid could have made up when pretending to sing opera. Just make your voice really high and stretch out each word! Look, ma, I’m doing opera!