The people at Microsoft agree.

(Thank you red squiggly line. ) Is it cool to say it? Probably. But such linguistic transgressions are widespread. Time is money and abbreviation is key.

Last week, I found myself in the thick of a debate about 'popera'. I think someone at RT�? coined the term. A new word, a new genre, a new marketing ruse and a new topic for me to analyse beyond all necessity. The best way to explain 'popera' is to mention the names of a few of the genre's main protagonists - Il Divo, Opera Babes, Russell Watson, G4. They are as close to sugar plum fairies' as you'll ever get - all shiny and sparkly, designed to deliver sugarcoated nuggets of music to the sad world. Some people even say they possess magical powers that enable them to morph into anything anyone pays them to be and they are particularly wont to do the will of their overlords, collectively known as 'Record Companies'.

A few years ago, someone at a record label hit on the very marketable idea of cloaking pop music in the guise of opera and selling it to people as the latter.

When you consider the now decade-old trend, if not older, in instrumental classical music that is personified by Vanessa Mae, it actually took producers quite a long time to breach the gates of opera. Though live opera is, statistically, better attended than symphony concerts, it seems to have never seen the same kind of accessibility in the cd market and it certainly hasn't slipped as easily into the wallpaper-music function as its instrumental equivalent has.

With this 'popera' and with their customary shrewdness, record labels are now selling a watereddown version of a genre by which the market has been hitherto intimidated. Not only are they tapping into the innocent curiosity of someone who might seek out real opera were this not available to them but they are tapping into the arbitrary prestige that surrounds opera and its live scene.

To the consumer, this seems like an altogether more mature and sophisticated choice than Westlife or the likes and can be passed off, with the right blurb on the sleeve, as opera.

What effect is this having on classical music and opera as we know and appreciate it? I wish I could follow through with the argument of 'popera' being a completely separate genre and answer that question with a firm "none" but I don't believe that that is entirely the case. There is validity in the argument that this might serve the market as an introduction to opera and nothing more but that is not what the record and promotion companies want. There simply isn't as much money to be made from singing Puccini the way it's meant to be sung.

If people think they know Grieg's piano concerto when they've heard the Opera Babes' vocalised, lyricised version of it, which they call, 'Sempre Ricordo', or Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Scheherezade', which they give some other epic name to, it's a very sad day for classical music. Is it right that the music of these composers is treated in this way? I say no. When someone samples a Bowie song, rock-buffs are up in arms. I am entitled to be equally irked by this phenomenon.

I would like to go into my theory that 'popera' is a toxic byproduct of this "I'm a celebrity, get me out of this opera house, " media frenzy but I don't have space so I must abbreviate and summarise. It's total b-s.