Let's set the scene. It's a hot summer's day during the 2000s and you've just gotten home from school. You park yourself in front of the TV to begin your daily ritual of snacking and catching the afternoon cartoons on ABC.
After watching some of your faves, like Angela Anaconda and Silversun, one of the more, uh, odd shows comes on. Its name? Soupe Opéra.
It started off innocently enough — with a lottery of fruits and vegetables serving as its introduction.
But that tricked you into thinking that this was a perfectly normal kids' show, when really, it was of the cooked variety that Australian TV seemed to favour during the 2000s.
What followed was a seemingly endless montage of stop-motion footage, that would see your average grocery basket of fresh fruit and veg, ~magically~ transformed into different animals.
Sometimes this would result in creative and cute characters, like this rooster.
But more often than not, the animals would be severely cursed and fuel the nightmares of Australian children watching.
Like, this is terrifying and I'm sure the creators of Soupe Opéra knew exactly what they were doing.
Pushing the terrifying visuals aside, the most memorable thing about Soupe Opéra was the background music.
Each episode featured an opera lady singing, "SOOUUPEE OPPPÈÈRRAA", before it transitioned to these heavy beats.
Then came the "BOM BOM BOM BOM" part, which sounds like pure gibberish to the ordinary individual reading this — but in the context of Soupe Opéra, it makes perfect sense.
It was haunting to say the very least. Imagine someone playing this in your room at midnight when it's dead silent and you're trying to sleep.
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Perhaps that's why Soupe Opéra has always felt like the remnants of a long-forgotten nightmare. The black backdrop and the Frankenstein-esque animal creations combined with the music just really made no sense.
And no one really knew it by the official title — it was always just that zany produce show that had a booming opera lady singing "soupe OPERA!"
Anyway, like many of the other cooked shows to be shown on Australian screens during the 2000s, I'm grateful for Soupe Opéra. It was a blessing and a curse, and will forever live on in the memories of Aussie millennials.
