The Bronx Opera Company kicks off its 49th season this month, and as Bronx reporter Erin Clarke tell us, this opera is for everyone.

Let's face it: opera isn't everyone's cup of tea.

"A lot of people are turned off by opera," Nicole Lee Aiossa, an opera singer, said. "The things I hear all the time are: 'tickets are too high, it's too fancy, I don't have a gown to wear, I don't understand it.'"

But the Bronx Opera's Company mission is to change that. You don't have to go into Manhattan, wear fancy clothes, or spend a lot of money for a ticket. Most seats are from $5 to $35.

"It demystifies it," said Benjamin Spierman, the Resident Stage Director of the Bronx Opera Company. "It takes it from something that is thought of as something that you need to be sort of upper class to experience and enjoy, to something that everybody can enjoy."

The way the Bronx Opera sees it, enjoying the opera means understanding it. Every performance is in English, no matter what language it was written in.

"Why do they love it?" said Michael Spierman, the founder and Artistic Director of the Bronx Opera Company. "There's no barrier."

It's what the Bronx Opera has been doing for almost half a century. A crew of about 120 performs two operas a year — one in the winter, the other in the spring — at Lehman College, Hunter College, and other venues in the city and suburbs. The community-based company also brings opera into the schools.

"We come in and we talk to the kids and introduce them to our shows," Benjamin Spierman said.

The Bronx Opera is perhaps smaller than the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, but what it offers is an introduction to the art form to people who might not go to the opera at all.

Michael Spierman started the Bronx Opera Company in 1967, thinking if everyone could understand the art form, they'd love it.

Now longtime opera lovers sit beside opera newbies, taking in performances that are often far cries from traditional opera.

"It's not just the big, fat lady with the horns just standing around or, you know, some tenor waddling on," Aiossa said. "There's drama and there's excitement in it."

The Bronx Opera's new season gets under way Saturday, Jan. 16, with performances of the opera Regina, a drama of dysfunction and greed. For more information visit bronxopera.org