The streets that wend their way to the Royal Opera House are, this rainy Wednesday evening, crowded with golf umbrellas and expensive perfume. Tonight sees the staging of The Rake's Progress, and the foyer of the London venue is flooded with people in evening dress, their voices ringing clear and crisp across the hall. I stand there in my jeans and scruffy shoes, flapping my broken umbrella, and gulp.

For years now, the nation's various opera companies have been making strenuous efforts to attract a more diverse audience - with modern interpretations, cheap tickets, outdoorshows, cinematic screenings, "simulcasts" from the New York Met, club nights, cult artists, Damon Albarn's Monkey, a presence on Facebook and YouTube, and even ticket offers in the Sun. It does seem to be working: Royal Opera House attendance figures are up 80,000 on last year; 48% of patrons are ROH newcomers; more than 22,000 students are registered for the company's stand-by ticket scheme; and 385,000 people download the ROH podcast each month.

But can they make me want to come back? I am, surely, exactly the sort of person they are trying to tempt. I spend much of my time listening to music and attending gigs. I will happily spend vast sums on festivals. Yet classical music has always seemed a cold and distant land, set far away across a sea of elitism. I have had little desire to visit it and I have always bridled at the notion that classical is considered a higher art form than rock'n'roll. Sod your arias, I thought, I'll stick with Little Richard singing: "A-wop-bop-a-loo-wop-a-wop-bam-boom!"

Accordingly, I have attended the opera just once, over a decade ago. It did little to encourage me. Yet some things have intrigued me: the short bursts from the Oakland Symphony Chamber Chorus that appear in the Van Morrison song Snow in San Anselmo; the fact that when I interviewed the great Patti Smith, she raved about Puccini's Madame Butterfly. So tonight, sitting in the velvet seats of the Opera House, listening to the orchestra heave and huff before the curtain rises, I try to keep an open mind. The Rake's Progress is the cautionary tale of a man named Tom Rakewell who deserts his lady, Anne Trulove, to seek fame and fortune in London in the company of Nick Shadow, who, it transpires, is the devil. After various episodes involving whores and bearded ladies, Rakewell ends up in Bedlam.

Although it is performed in English, there are surtitles for when the singing grows incomprehensible, and there is an extravagant set, full of oil wells and racing cars, which will hopefully prove compelling should one's mind begin to stray. Which it does. Repeatedly. The problems are various: I don't really care for the singing, all the fah-diddly-dahing smothers the plot. I find it extremely annoying that they keep repeating everything; a character will reiterate precisely what he has already said in the most tedious fashion. On top of it all, it's rather warm. I reach the interval feeling decidedly drowsy.

Everyone rushes to the bar and I am suddenly surrounded by umpteen well-dressed, middle-aged men shoving their way in front of me. I can't recall the last time I encountered such rudeness. Not even in the city's most dog-eared rock venues do you find such uncouth behaviour. For a small fortune, I eventually procure wine and pistachios, and stand in the corner contemplating how objectionable everyone is. I think of my friends, somewhere across town watching a band called the Virgins and feel tearful.

My heart lifts when I discover that the second half of an opera is generally shorter than the first. Back in my seat, feeling more buoyant, I wonder what I make of The Rake's Progress, and conclude that, while it looks spectacular, it is actually very dreary while, musically speaking, I like it slightly less than bassline house. As the curtain falls, I am off across town to meet my friends at a scuzzy little bar where there is cheap beer and loud rock.

The next evening I return for The Marriage of Figaro, this time with a friend. "It's the worst place in the world!" I tell him. He, however, is enthusiastic, because he wants to hear the famous "Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!" passage. I tell him he has three long, warbly hours before him and his zeal evaporates. Figaro is Mozart's satirical take on the aristocracy, with lots of infidelity and jumping out of windows. Again, it looks gorgeous and the music is quite luscious. It is undoubtedly more engaging than the Rake, but my mind still wanders. "Why do they need to repeat everything?" my friend whispers. "Exactly." I reply. "They could get the whole thing done a lot faster if they just said it once." We quell the boredom by surreptitiously eating an orange. At the interval, we head to the bar. "Weren't you here last night?" the barman says. "Yes," I sigh. "Dear God," says a woman. "I don't think I could do two nights in a row."

So, just why do people go to opera? As far as I can see, it's too long, the music, singing and drama never work together, and it is staggeringly self-indulgent, like sitting through the most noodly Carlos Santana guitar solo, only for Chris Rea to appear and go through it all again, with Mark Knopfler joining in for good measure. I think people must attend opera in the same way they introduce roughage to their diet - because they ought to, rather than because they want to.

Later that month, I catch a train to Buxton for the opera festival, to see Dido and Aeneas by Purcell, and Samson by Handel. Buxton is a gorgeous place and the crowd far less annoying. I have been listening to Madame Butterfly repeatedly, to accustom myself to the style of singing. It seems to be paying off: I enjoy Dido and Aeneas far more than I expect. Samson, though, is a struggle. It's the biblical tale, but rendered more contemporary with nods to terrorism and latter-day dictators.

When the festival chorus is on stage, it's lovely, but whenever Samson starts lamenting about everything, I just want him to stop moaning. It doesn't help that Samson's mother, in the style of her hair and the way she dips her head when she sings, puts me in mind of Princess Diana being interviewed by Martin Bashir. Still, as the production feels considerably more am-dram than anything at the Royal Opera House, it makes me like it more.

Next is a trip to Glyndebourne, the jewel of the opera season. It is raining the day my friend and I visit in our evening gowns. Fine grey mist is sweeping across the lawn where the picnickers are dressed in all their finery. It rather puts a dampener on what is meant to be a splendid day out to the East Sussex countryside, with a bit of opera on the side. We are here to see Love and Other Demons, an adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez's novel. Márquez is one of my favourite writers, so I'm actually excited. The daughter of a marquis is bitten by a dog, contracts rabies, is imprisoned in a convent, where an exorcist falls obsessively in love with her. Lavishly staged, it is sung in English, Latin, Spanish and Yoruba. I want to like this, really I do, but everything I love about Márquez's writing - his ripeness, his deliciousness - has been stripped away. It makes me very sad.

At the interval, we spill out into the grounds to drink champagne. The sense of occasion here at Glyndebourne, the black tie and the gowns, the salmon sandwiches and the strolls through the luscious grounds, make it feel like a country wedding. My feelings towards the audience here are more benign. There is one exception: the woman who glares at us as the photographer takes my picture on the lawn. "That's so not Glyndebourne!" she hisses. I have a profound desire to spit in her hair.

It is not just incidents like this that will keep me from returning to opera. It is the fact that I just cannot find a friend in this music. I can see it is beautiful. I can tell they are singing magnificently, but it stirs nothing in my belly, conjures nothing in my heart. It carries for me none of the fire, the spine-tingling, stomach-flipping, bone-chilling lifeblood of rock'n'roll.

Back at Glyndebourne, the rain is falling hard. With the applause inside still ringing, we hitch up the muddy hems of our evening gowns and dash to the taxi. "Get us out of here!" I tell the driver as he takes us to the station. "As fast as you can!" On the train home, we swig cheap rosé straight from the bottle and eat dry-roasted peanuts, letting the arias fade into the distance ...