Monica Pearl discusses the pleasures of opera, exploring through her own long immersion as an aficionado a new poetics through which we might understand the experience of bliss which is peculiar to this art form. Here language is somehow not enough, or not adequate. And yet, of course, we must employ language to talk about this intense experience. Questions of gender and sexuality come into play in this encounter, though not necessarily in the ways other writers have suggested. Richard Strauss’ The Rosenkavalier offers the opportunity for sustained reflection on how the bliss of opera works.