Newsnight Review discussed the Channel 4 reality show about wannabe opera singers.

Watch the whole programme

(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

MARK LAWSON:
Channel 4's Operatunity. The discussion ain't started until the thin lady speaks.

Miranda, they found a lot of boy bands, girl bands through this kind of process. But are they gong to find tenors and divas, do you think?

MIRANDA SAWYER:
I actually think that they may well do. But it's not really a telly programme about that. What it's about, is trying to get people to go to the opera I think.

So what the ENO want is somebody, the equivalent of Martine McCutcheon, to sing in the ENO. And they can't get that, so they have to trawl round the country in order to get this great big advert.

I have to say I was really quite looking forward to this. I like reality shows, I think opera is full of laughs, full of, you know, death, great.

And I found it a bit boring, I have to say. It was pretty boring. I kept wandering off to go and make the tea. It didn't really grab me at all. Maybe it will get better later.

LAWSON:
Mark Kermode, the thing that interests me sitting down to watch it is our attitude to talent - that we tend to think, cynically, that anyone can be a pop star. And some of these shows have proved that.

We expect opera singers, I think, to have talent.

MARK KERMODE:
Well, I think the main problem with this was that the contestants all seem to be very talented. I couldn't stand them being used in this way.

To me reality television is the new pornography. The best and worst of it is theatre of cruelty. The problem with this is you like the people, because they're obviously very talented. They keep telling you how rubbish their lives are and how this is the only thing that's going to make them better.

Then you have these people who say things like "Well done you." And you just think "I'm sorry!"

And they keep saying this is not about, it's not a competition, nobody loses. It's about an Operatunity. It's like I'm sorry, everything you need to know about it is in the title.

If it really was an Operatunity, you wouldn't be doing it in this terrible TV format. I think all the contestants are really talented and really smart and I hate a programme which makes me then sit there, watching one of them getting an envelope and going:

"Ooh, it's very big, obviously I've got through. Oh, no, I haven't got through." And you just think, that's the theatre of embarrassment.

LAWSON:
I agree that there's cruelty in it, but why is it reprehensible as a form, because people are made into stars through these programmes?

KERMODE:
Well one person at the end of this will be made into a

LAWSON:
Well that's one more person than would have been otherwise.

KERMODE:
Yeah, but in the meantime, you have to watch all these other perfectly decent and talented people suffer falling by the way, and we have to actually be there with a camera at the point in which they learn, with no dignity at all, they haven't got through.

The problem with it is, it's not even nasty enough. That's why Popstars was fine. Because who cares? Just be as nasty as you want. But with these, these are older people, with more to lose perhaps. I just thought it was cruel, but not cruel enough.

LAWSON:
Bonnie Greer is on the board at the Royal Opera House. What do you think of what your English cousin down the road is doing here?

BONNIE GREER:
Let me tread carefully here. I really respect the ENO for actually trying to open up their stage. But, you know, we use the term "dumb down", and it's a clich� and I always think it's usually unfairly applied. But if you actually want to know what "dumb down" means, look at this programme.

This is not what opera is about. This is not about some guy walking out of a shower and going into the stage of a major opera company and getting a job.

Opera is about learning how to present yourself on stage. It's about graft, it's about work, it's about travel, it's about your parents' sacrificing for you.

I'm surprised that these professionals at the ENO would actually get themselves involved in a situation that makes everybody think, all you have to do is get up there and sing.

That is not what it is about.

The voices that were there - this may sound cruel, but I'm going to say this - being an artist is actually a dysfunctional life.

It's not about waiting until you have your kids or waiting on a table or all of that. It does a disservice to all the people who sacrificed themselves to actually have an opera career.

I don't know what the choristers of the ENO are going to think when some guy who comes off the street, they're going to put him on the stage, to be in the chorus of Rigoletto for one night, I think that's crap really.

LAWSON:
They're trying to address that problem, that of opera's elitist reputation. Which is something that you have to address at the Royal Opera House isn't it?

GREER:
It's not about elitism. It's about work. It's about work. It takes years to be able to get to the point where you can be on a stage.

It's not, it's not about having a good voice. It's about being an athlete. You don't see that part of it in it at all.

SAWYER:
There is also the idea, I mean opera isn't for the masses. GREER:
It is for the masses. It is.

LAWSON:
We're going to have to leave it there.