Hey! I've Heard Those Opera Tunes Before!

Even if you aren't a fan of opera or classical music, unless you have been living as a jungle hermit hiding out in Tibet or some even more isolated place, you surely have heard quite a few catchy opera music before. Ever been curious about the origin of that hooky tune you hear that keeps you replaying a certain TV commercials or film clip in your head over and over again? I bet you'd recognize at least a few of the numbers listed here: (click on the song title to hear Youtube clip)

1. Lakmé: Flower Duet (Dome épais)
From Leo Delibes' exotic opera about an Indian princess Lakmé and her mezzo-soprano slave Mallika, who find their own garden environs so enchantingly beautiful that they break into song... or, rather, an enchantingly flowery duet in praise of it. It is such an exquisitely soothingly blissful music that car commercials love to use it as background theme to suggest the smooth driving experience. I don't know how the cars usually live up to the suggestion, but the music has unquestionably stood the test of time.

2. Die Walküre (The Valkyrie): Ride of the Valkyries
This rousing war cry of the Valkyries, the goddesses of Norse mythology, is most often associated with the apocalyptical 'Helicopter Fleet Scene' from the film 'Apocalypse Now', though it also shows up in many other war films and commercials. It is, aside from the Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin, perhaps the best known piece of music by Richard Wagner. Listen to the thing and you can almost see the carcass-grabbing daughters of Wotan streaking across the sky (in the form of the aurora borealis) on their way to another feasting at the battle field.