>>>For some, choice in music is intensely personal.
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>>True. After 40 years in the rock'n roll end of the music business I find that these days I mostly listen to classical stuff.
>
>During my musical-formative years my sister was learning to be a mezzo-soprano. She is (and was even then) pretty good but I still OD'd on classical.

I guess the statute of limitations has expired so I will say a stalwart of the old FoxForum, Stuart Somerville, is an opera buff. He also lives in Vancouver. On an online opera forum he got to know Jane Eaglen, who posted under a pseudonym. The last time I saw Stuart he flew to Chicago to watch her perform at the Lyric Opera, we had lunch, and I dropped him off for the show. (He was too polite to say it would have been wasted on me). After the show he and Jane were going to dinner. He said she's a perfectly normal person, she's just blessed with pipes that can blow the roof off.