Single, sad and sitting before your computer, you wonder: Should I tell people on this personals site that I like 19th-century organ music and Wagnerian opera?

No way.

You have to play it safe on a mass-market meat market.

So you write instead about your ability to cook a fine remoulade sauce and your recent purchase of a Toyota hybrid. Few people who read singles ads understand the power of Wagner to stir the soul.

Except the people who sign onto the Classical Music Lovers' Exchange, a Web-based matchmaking service out of New York City. These singles salivate when it comes to classical music. Most of them played instruments when they were young, attend concerts whenever they can and are looking for people to cuddle with while listening to Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts on Saturday afternoons.

So in their personals ads, CMLE singles write lines such as "love Rachmaninoff," "took piano lessons for 10 years" and "cannot imagine life without music" to spark the interest of potential mates. One current member from Cincinnati, after stating that he's 31 and 5 feet 11 inches, simply wrote "Physician; Schumann, Schumann, Schumann."

Pity that lovers of such a romantic art form require an unromantic form of matchmaking. It's much more pleasant to meet the way Clara and Robert Schumann did in the 1830s: He moved into her family's house to take piano lessons from her father.

But in modern times, online dating sites have replaced traditional mating rites. And if Christians and vegetarians need their own personals, so do classical music fans.

Tamara Monique Conroy saw this need in 1980, when she launched the Classical Music Lovers' Exchange from her home in Pelham, N.Y. She built the service to the point where, in 1989, it had its highest number of members to date: 1,000.

Now the membership has dipped to 500, and the service is operated by Stewart Neill (63, divorced, computer consultant, resident of Queens, N.Y., self-described classical music "fanatic").

The way it works is that new members -- who hail from all over the country -- write brief descriptions of themselves that are mailed to other members or displayed on the Web site. If a member is interested in reading someone's longer biographical profile, he or she orders the profile for $2. A six-month membership costs $65.

It should be noted, however, that the site -- just like the concert hall -- attracts mostly older people. Rarely are CMLE members in their 20s or early 30s. And currently there are no members in Pittsburgh. Since most members live on the East or West Coast, people in the center of the country must often develop long-distance relationships with other CMLE members.

Neill, a talkative New Yorker who used to be the chief information officer at Saks Fifth Avenue, admits that he is frustrated by the lack of younger members. He recently bought some radio ads around the country, including in Pittsburgh, to attract a wider range of music fans. Until now, he'd advertised mostly in the New York Review of Books and New York magazine.

Neill said by phone from New York that concerts aren't good places for single music lovers to meet because intermissions are brief, few people go to concerts alone, and it's hard to know who in the audience is unattached.

"Cultured people don't congregate," Neill said. "Museums are a little better than other places to meet people, but that's still very hit-or-miss, and you don't necessarily get classical music lovers there.

"I've always been pretty outgoing," he continued. "I've never had trouble meeting people. I literally had hundreds of girlfriends before I got married. But I rarely found people who shared my cultural interests, and if they did, they didn't share my level of interest."

That wasn't the case with Charles and Lisa Kroll of Austin, Texas. Years ago, when they were just friends, Lisa told Charles about CMLE. The two of them found many dates through the service and each got married to people they'd met through CMLE. But in the late 1990s they realized they were meant for each other and married.

"She's Mozart, Bach, Prokofiev," Charles Kroll said. "I like Brahms and Mahler."

For Giacomo DeAnnuntis, who lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Sheila, classical music was essential to a good relationship -- something he discovered before meeting Sheila on CMLE in 1998.

"I once met a woman who had a whole room full of her rock music collection, so we both realized pretty early on that it wasn't going to work," DeAnnuntis said. "Classical music was the minimum requirement."

Neill says people who like classical music tend to also be fond of reading, art and theater. But can more specific generalizations be made about people who like classical music? Are guys who like Bach organ music romantic enough? Do cellists make good parents? Are women who harbor a love of Gershwin satisfied with guys who like Gounod?

That's for CMLE members to find out through experience. And they'll keep getting the opportunity as long as Neill keeps sending out new member profiles. He said he expects to continue overseeing CMLE for the time being, even though he isn't making money on it.

"If I didn't care about it, if it was just another business, I'd probably shut it down," he said. "But I'm convinced it can do something. I have a sense that I'm doing something useful for the music-loving community."