Newbies' Passion for Opera 'Like Love at First Sight'

The passion that opera fans feel for the art form is more akin to love at first sight than a slow-growing desire, Reuters reports. A sociologist focused on fans in the cheap seats who hadn't been brought up on opera, and found they tended to have an intense, explosive attraction to the opera the first time they went—with the learning process coming later.

"Fans get hooked when they are still outsiders, before having an active apparatus to interpret the experience, or are thoroughly socialized in what constitutes the enjoyment and how they should decode it," the professor said. "Learning through interaction happens not at the beginning, as expected, but as the logical continuation that helps to shape the initial attraction." (More opera stories.)