Opera is a combination of all three! Actually, any musical theatre combines visuals, words, and song. Opera usually takes a deeper approach: politics is nastier, love is more tragic, heroic myth is more exalted when sung by costumed participants in the drama. And it doesn't have to be in some foreign language, or about sickly cigarette sellers or cursed ship captains. Example, you are perhaps familiar with Rick Wakeman's "Journey to the Center of the Earth"? Jules Verne told a pretty wild adventure story, and Wakeman took it from there. Interesting music (but the singing can be scraped off the bottom of my shoes). The mental images are wonderful. Poserworks is having an incredible sale right now. I just nabbed the Nautilus. I have no intentions of recreating the scene with the giant squid (that's someone else's story), but a ship like that surely had other adventures? And perhaps the organ would work with Ockham's python script for the calliope? It's got potential. :) Maybe I'll paint it pink, dub it "Rosie the Rivetted", and feature a Victorian heroine and her furry companion obsessed with the search for fabled Lemuria? Anything can be a springboard for a story, but pulling all the elements together... words and art and music... can raise it into another class. Carolly