Differing perspectives

I remember walking out of a cinema a few years ago at the end of a movie and being amazed at the response of the people with us to the movie we had just watched. I had found it one of the most disappointing movies I had ever seen. In fact, several times through it, I found myself wanting to get up and leave the theatre - something I had only ever done once before at a movie, ever and I was currently entering my forties. The movie was the latest version of Phantom of the Opera, based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that was released 2004.

As we left the cinema, I was ready to contribute to the inevitable discussion that would result amongst my friends over the movie.  I kept silent though, not wanting to start the negative talk and waiting for someone else to vent the disappointment I expected we were all feeling.  

However, I was in for a rude awakening.  My friends had loved the movie and that was what they quickly began to share.  While I had been sitting there cringing at nearly every song and note sung (it seems now, but I could definitely be exaggerating it in my memory), my friends had been sitting there enjoying not only the music, but also the spectacle of it. While I had focused on the music and singing and how far short it seemed to fall from the starndard of the 1980s album of the musical, they had just enjoyed it thoroughly dramatically and musically.

I wonder why the stark contrast between my response to the movie and that of my friends.  Was it that I had romanticised the old recordings, or their part in my life, so much that I couldn't stand anything else?  Or perhaps had I begun to judge musical performance against a new ideal as a result of studying Vocal Performance at university that no mainstream performance would ever meet, even my own.  Or was it some other thing completely.  

Looking back now, I take an important lesson from this experience about perspectives and how different people respond differently to music and performances.  As the saying goes "one man's trash is another man's treasure" and that applies as much to people receiving a musical performance as to other things.