more about opera: smotret' or slushat'?

[A S]

I am not a native speaker of Russian, so I don't know what the norm  
is,  but 'watching/seeing' vs. 'hearing/listening' to an opera is a  
distinction that can be made in many languages, including English.

  The visual production of opera is one of its most important  
characteristics (just look at the number of live vs. studio  
recordings on CD), after all it is a synthesis of theatre and song,  
isn't it? If not, we would simply go and listen to people in formal  
dress singing lined up on a blank stage. So it seems to me that your  
youthful intuition of 'смотреть оперу' was cognitively  
correct even if it is not accepted in normative Russian grammar.

In English, if I went to an opera house or watched one on TV, I would  
definitely say "I've seen an opera" or "I saw Turandot" and not "I've  
heard an opera" or "I listened to Turandot". I would only say the  
latter if I had listened to a recording of it say on the radio or a  
hi-fi without a visual component.





On 10/03/2006, at 15.34, Inna Caron wrote:

> 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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