At the grocery store this morning the musack was a disco-ized version of the famous aria from Madame Butterfly.

As a classical music lover this sort of thing annoys me no end.

I find myself thinking, "Be original, write your own music, don't borrow."

But then I recall that this is an issue in popular music between contemporary musicians - what is "borrowing" and what is "stealing" ?

I don't pay attention to popular music so I suppose what I'm feeling is that I don't care what they do to each other, I just want them to leave classical music alone.

I also often find it grating when someone arranges a piece of classical music for a different instrument than it was written for.  Or orchestrates music that was not written for an orchestra.  To me it almost never works.