more about opera: smotret' or slushat'?

[Sara Stefani]

Liz makes a good point, and in thinking about my own native language, I would
give this addendum to my previous posting: I think that in English the 
verb you
use could conceivably depend to some degree on the venue in which you view the
opera. If someone is going/went to an opera at a rather small venue (the Met,
the Bol'shoi), I would definitely use "to see." It sounds a bit strange to me
to say "We heard 'La Traviata' last night," although perhaps not outside the
realm of possibility. If, however, someone said, "They are playing 'La
Traviata' in Central Park tomorrow," you could follow it up with the questions
"Do you want to go see it/go listen to it/go hear it?" The implication here
being that the venue is so large that you probably won't be sitting near the
stage and therefore won't see much of anything, so you won't have much other
choice than to hear it or listen to it, depending on how much attention you're
going to pay to it!

I agree that the major focus in opera is the singing, but there is also 
quite a
lot of spectacle and pageantry involved in watching an opera (sets, costumes),
and that is perhaps what English speakers focus on?

ss

Quoting Elizaveta Moussinova <emoussin at INDIANA.EDU>:

> Privet Inna! :))
>
> Kak dela?
>
> It might depend on the focus with which one looks at the opera. To my 
> opinion, the primary focus of opera is music and voices of singers; 
> the visual part is secondary. I am not sure how the cast is chosen 
> for an opera exactly, but I suppose that they mainly pay attention to 
> voices (soprano, tenor, etc). An adult singer may be chosen to sing a 
> part of a 16-year-old thin fragile shepherdess. I think then 
> "slushat' operu" is right.
>
> Liz Moussinova
> Indiana University
>
>
> Quoting Inna Caron <caron.4 at OSU.EDU>:
>
>> Here's another controversial item, also likely to be written off as an
>> archaism.
>>
>> When I was a little girl, my parents always corrected me when I said "my
>> smotreli operu," - "Operu ne smotryat, a slushayut." Now it would be as
>> difficult for me to use "smotret'" (regardless of how pompous and
>> pretentious it may sound to other native speakers), as to accept the
>> legitimization of neuter for coffee, and not mentally wince when someone
>> says "moe/chernoe kofe."
>>
>> So, I'm wondering - and this is not the matter of conducting a research
>> - just plain curiosity:
>>
>> 1) Do other native Russian speakers use "smotret' operu," or "slushat'
>> operu," when referring to live (not recorded) performance?
>>
>> 2) Do native speakers of English say "to see" or "to hear" in the same
>> context?
>>
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