I have attended operas, whenever I could not help it, for fourteen years now; I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening to an unfamiliar opera... that sort of intense but incoherent noise which always so reminds me of the time the orphan asylum burned down.
Mark Twain, a Biography

Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive.
Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), attrib

There was nothing in the present case which was an advantage over being skinned. Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

Going to the Opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it. Hannah More, letter to her sister (1775)

The banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyond belief. The racking and pitiliess pain of it remains stored up in my memory alongside the memory of the time that I had my teeth fixed...
- Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That's not love, it's just rubbish.
- Peter Shaffer, Amadeus