Impressions of an untrained opera visitor

In another attempt at getting cultured, I've recently seen performances of Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.

Random impressions:

I kept thinking that Cio-Cio-San's husband was Italian, given the facts that he sung in Italian, looked like an Italian, and at least behaved like a stereotypical one. But he was supposed to be an American naval officer visiting Japan.
After the bonze's scene, where he casts Cio-Cio-San out of the family, I kept hoping to see him back; his anger was impressive. He didn't come back, though; she remained outcast until she committed harakiri, which was the natural end of the opera.

Before going to Lucia di Lammermoor, I had been warned that bel canto opera could be a bit kitschy at times. And so it was. The story was of the calibre of The Castle of Otranto, but without the ghosts, and many of the arias seemed to be written solely for the purpose of showing off how high the sopranos and tenors could come. The phrase 'Disney for grown-ups' came to my mind a few times.¹ However, the nice thing about Disney is that the songs are usually well-written, especially if one ignores the lyrics; this held for the opera as well. At times, five soloists, the orchestra and the choir were all singing or playing simultaneously, but in such a way that the sound still made sense to me, and that I even liked it.
Lucia sang so well, that despite the fact that she was obviously showing off, I actually felt pity for her. I suppose that also says something about me², and perhaps about Donizetti's composing³. Enrico also sang very well, and he looked like an interesting combination of a Scottish laird and a grown-up former punk youth.
The staging showed a combination of technique and minimalism: on the one hand, there was a rotating stage with a pond that rose out of and sunk back into the floor, and on the other, the backsides of stage screens were used to symbolise what I interpreted as the walls of primitive Scottish castle chambers.

In general, I was surprised every time the audience started applauding in the middle of an act, but apparently this is common practice after well-known arias. I feel excused, since I neither knew those well-known arias, nor the opera visitors' etiquette. To me, it just looked like an interruption of the story; I would not start applauding in the middle of a play after a well-known monologue, either. Then again, in these operas, the drama often came second in the order of importance, at a safe distance behind the music. And the arias were impressive.
I have the idea that I'm slowly getting used to hearing operatic singing, in the sense that lots of vibrato does not disturb me like it used to anymore. It's nice: now I can devote my attention to other aspects of the performance, and those turn out to be generally pleasant :).

¹Of course, this was immediately followed by mental apologies to Donizetti for historical incorrectness: Disney is perhaps like modern bel canto opera for children.
²What it says about me is left as an exercise for the reader :p.
³Quasi quantum-physically, one could say that it says something about the entangled system consisting of Lucia's singing, Donizetti's composing, and me, but that the information about the individual constituting components cannot be retrieved...