Let’s address the question I get asked more than any other: “How am I supposed to enjoy something I can’t understand?”

It’s a fair question. Most operas are sung in Italian, German, French, or Russian. Unless you’re a polyglot or spent a semester abroad, you’re going to need some help. But here’s the good news: opera has always been written for audiences who don’t fully understand the language. Even in Verdi’s day, the audience in Naples didn’t always follow the literary Italian on stage. They came for the music, the drama, and the spectacle.

You can do the same. But a bit of preparation goes a long way.

Surtitles are your best friend

Every major opera production in Australia uses surtitles — translated text projected above or beside the stage. Think of them as subtitles for live performance. Opera Australia has used them for decades, and most other companies have followed suit.

The trick is finding the right rhythm with surtitles. At first, you’ll probably read every line, and your eyes will bounce between the stage and the text like you’re watching tennis. That’s normal. After about 15 minutes, something shifts. You start reading less and watching more, glancing at the text only when you need to confirm what’s happening.

My advice: don’t try to read every word. Surtitles give you the gist. The music and the acting give you the emotion. Between the two, you’ll follow the story just fine.

A few practical tips: if you’re in the upper circle or the back of the stalls, surtitles can be harder to read. Consider bringing a small pair of opera glasses. They’re not just for seeing the singers — they’re incredibly useful for reading distant surtitle screens.

Read the synopsis beforehand

This is the single most useful thing you can do, and it takes about five minutes.

Opera plots are not complicated. Most of them can be summarised in a paragraph: woman falls in love with the wrong person, tragedy ensues. Man makes a deal with a supernatural being, regrets it. Jealous husband kills innocent wife based on false evidence. The stories are archetypal — love, betrayal, sacrifice, revenge — and once you know the basic shape, everything on stage makes more sense.

Every opera program includes a synopsis, and you can find them online for free. The Opera Australia website has excellent plot summaries for their current season, and sites like Opera Wiki and OperaGlass offer comprehensive guides to the standard repertoire.

I’d suggest reading the synopsis twice: once to get the overall shape, and once to understand the act-by-act structure. Then put it away and let the performance do its work.

Listen to the highlights in advance

You don’t need to listen to the entire opera beforehand — that can actually diminish the surprise of the live experience. But familiarising yourself with the main arias and musical themes means you’ll have anchors in the performance. When a melody you recognise appears, it orients you in the story.

Spotify and Apple Music both have “Opera Highlights” playlists that are surprisingly well curated. Search for the specific opera and look for a highlights or “best of” compilation. Twenty minutes of listening the day before will make a noticeable difference.

Use the program wisely

Opera programs are usually thick booklets with a lot of information. You don’t need to read them cover to cover before the curtain goes up. But there are a few sections worth checking:

• Cast list and character descriptions. Knowing that the tenor is the hero and the baritone is the villain helps enormously.
• Scene breakdown. A quick look at what happens in each scene gives you a roadmap.
• Director’s notes. These can be pretentious, yes, but they also tell you what interpretation the production is going for, which is useful if the staging is updated or unconventional.

Save the essays and historical context for interval reading. They’re often fascinating, and interval is when you need something to talk about over your drink.

Trust your instincts

Here’s something that might sound counterintuitive: you don’t actually need to understand every word to follow an opera. Music communicates emotion with extraordinary precision. When a soprano’s voice breaks with grief, you feel it. When the orchestra surges with triumph, you know something has been won. When the harmony darkens, danger is coming.

Opera composers were masters of musical storytelling. Puccini could make you cry with a chord change. Mozart could make you laugh with a melodic twist. If you let yourself respond to the music rather than anxiously decoding every lyric, you’ll find you understand far more than you expected.

I remember my first opera — La Bohème at the Sydney Opera House, 2001. I understood maybe 10% of the Italian. I cried like a child at the end. The music told me everything I needed to know.

The language isn’t the barrier you think it is

Opera is performed in foreign languages for the same reason songs sound better in their original language: the music was composed to fit specific words, rhythms, and vowel sounds. An Italian aria sung in English often sounds awkward because the melody was shaped around Italian syllables.

Some companies perform in English translation, and that’s a perfectly valid choice — especially for introducing new audiences. But most mainstage productions stick to the original language because it sounds better musically.

Don’t let that intimidate you. Between surtitles, a five-minute synopsis, and the extraordinary communicative power of the human voice, you have everything you need. Opera was written to move you. Language is just the delivery system. The emotion is universal.