Comparing Wagner to the "Sex Pistols" is akin to likening Einstein to a worm, on the grounds that each is the member of a species that both consumes and defecates.
 
More to the point, the technical complexity and musical achievement of opera demands that listeners reach, grow, learn, evolve; whereas punk, metal, and its ilk, seem to be mainly about employing a regressive emotional infantilism in the service of human debasement. To suggest that there is some sort of parity between the greatest artistic achievements of western civilization and the exploitive, explicitly commercial rants of no-talents with "attitude," is to add bumbling weight to the downslide of civilization already underway.
 
National Public Radio (NPR), January 16, 2003
John Byrd, of Reston, Virginia, taking umbrage with NPR's story regarding the
crossover audience that opera companies are finding among fans of punk rock: